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Hints Toward a Theory 
of Ethics 



THEO. B. STORK 



PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR 
BY THE 

LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY 

PHILADELPHIA, PA. 



LIBRARY of GONORESS 

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P£B 21 190r 

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Copyright, 1907, 

BY 

THEO. B. STORK. 



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HINTS TOWARD A THEORY 
OF ETHICS. 



I. If the question were put to the ordinary man 
in the street : " Why do you do that which is un- 
pleasant?" he probably would reply: "Because 
I think I must," or for " must " he might substi- 
tute "ought." There you have ethics in a sen- 
tence. It is a rough paraphrase from the opposite 
point of view of St. Paul's famous statement : 
*' What I would that I do not, but what I hate that 
I do." It is the eternal conflict of the ought of duty 
and the desire of bodily appetite. It is a recognition 
of that ethical antithesis between w^hat we call by 
the general name, duty, and pleasure, an antithesis 
which, on a more careful consideration, will reveal 
itself as in reality a conflict between different pleas- 
ures : for the " ought " or " must " of duty, properly 
understood, is as essentially a creature of pleasure 
and pain as the most sensual of pleasures. 

(3) 



4 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

All men, so far as we have knowledge of them, 
no matter what their condition of civilization or of 
barbarism, of knowledge or of ignorance, possess 
this feeling of the " must " or the " ought " in some 
shape. The particular acts to which this obligation 
of doing, or not doing, attaches vary widely : the 
obligation as a coercive impulse not at all. It has 
this remarkable characteristic, that it constrains the 
man to act often against his wishes and his desires, 
to do what he does not want to do. It is as real a 
fact as any fact of the material world, and as im- 
possible to be ignored ; it starts as a constraining 
power in the consciousness, opposed, set over against 
all other desires or appetites of the Kgo, and arro- 
gating to itself an authority that declares it superior 
to them in its demands for compliance with its be- 
hests. It often constrains the Kgo to accept pain for 
pleasure, contrary to its usual, and what might be 
called its natural, impulse. It is true that always 
there is experienced by the Ego a pleasurable condi- 
tion of consciousness, when, in obedience to this 
sense of obligation it gives up its other desires, and 
if it refuses obedience, a painful condition ensues ; 
so that even in thus giving up pleasure and accept- 
ing pain, the Ego may be said to be still moved by 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 5 

desire for the one and fear of the other. The sense 
of obligation, the "must," the "ought," is the 
cause, not the 'result of these pleasurable or painful 
conditions produced by obedience or disobedience 
to its commands. 

It is because the Ego feels this obligation that it 
experiences pleasure when it yields obedience to it. 
The pleasure is one that results from the discharge 
of a debt due, its cause lies in the previous and ante- 
cedent obligation. Without the sense of obligation, 
the feeling of necessity to do some particular thing, 
there would have been no pleasure resulting from 
the doing thereof. Separate in thought, analyze 
them as we will, the obligation of the " ought," and 
the pleasure or pain annexed to the obedience or 
disobedience to it are in reality indissolubly united. 
In that pleasure or pain lies the sanction of its obli- 
gation. If I felt no pleasure in obeying, no pain 
in disobeying, what effect could the obligation have 
on my will ? An obligation without these would in 
fact be no obligation. This has been recognized by 
thinkers of the most widely different schools. The 
spiritually-minded Cardinal Newman admits the 
importance of the part played by pleasure and pain 
as elements in the obligation of the "ought." In 



6 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

" Grammar of Assent" (1870, New York, Catholic 
Publication Society), page loi, he says : " The 
feeling of consciousness being ... a certain keen 
sensibility pleasant or painful — self-approval and 
hope, or compunction and fear — attended on certain 
of our actions, which in consequence we call right 
or wrong." Kant remarks to the same general effect : 
^' Moral conceptions are not perfectly pure concep- 
tions of reason, because an empirical element — of 
pleasure or pain — lies at the foundation of them."* 
2. This sense of obligation, this "eternal 
ought," as it lies elemental, immanent, but unde- 
veloped in the Ego, is a pure abstraction, that is, it 
is, to borrow a Hegelian phrase, purely formal, it 
has no context, it is not concrete, is not actualized, 
objectified. Its meaning is furnished when the ma- 
terial is presented to consciousness by sensations. 
Then this principle, this tendency, this sense of 
obligation to act in one way and not in another 
acquires, like the categories of cognition, its mean- 
ing. Until then it is blind : its reality is made 
manifest by this. But before we take the second 
step in the explanation of this mass of phenomena 

"^ " Of the Ideal in General: Critique of Pure Reason" 
(Meiklejohn's Translation). 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 7 

called ethics, and show how meaning is finally given 
to this empty form of the " ought " so that the 
" ought " becomes concrete, gains substantial real- 
ity, becomes infused with meaning by contact with 
the outside world of sensation, we have to ask and 
to answer the vital question. Where and how does 
this sense of obligation, this " ought," arise in the 
consciousness of the Ego ? 

We can only understand this by taking a funda- 
mental and primitive view of consciousness in its 
earliest stages. For, of course, this " ought " does 
not spring fully fledged, a IMinerva from the brain 
of Jupiter. It first emerges into consciousness in 
the shape of the feeling, or perception, or sense 
which the Ego has the instant that it comes in con- 
tact with the manifold presented to it in intuition 
that it, the percipient Ego, is only a part of a 
whole ; that all the manifold is part of a whole in 
which the percipient Ego and the perceived non- 
Ego, are united by some bond, in some way, under 
some law, which creates mutual dependence, consti- 
tutes mutual relations, obligations. Both Ego and 
non-Ego are felt to be parts of some whole, greater 
than either and inclusive of both, yet vague, not 
clearly conceived, but only dimly felt. 



8 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

3. We may trace this feeling, this instinct of 
unity, if we may call it so, through all the subse- 
quent development of the Ego. It has many sides, 
and we may regard it, therefore, in various ways ; 
but two especially demand attention. First, on the 
side of cognition, of thought, the Ego shows the 
working of this great fundamental principle in its 
instinctive, spontaneous activity when dealing with 
the manifold in intuition. In the simplest, the first 
efforts of the Ego to deal with the various sensations 
presented in consciousness, this instinct of unity 
compels it in the very act of perception to seek to 
collect the various sensations into groups, make 
bundles of them, which it binds together with a 
name, feigns for itself the notion substance as a 
nexzcs for each bundle, and, thus labeled for future 
reference, stores it away as an idea in memory. 

Proceeding a step further, it conpares the various 
bundles thus made and strives to still further unite 
and classify, and, with a more conscious effort than 
in the first instance, endeavors to connect them into 
an intelligible whole. And so on and on, with more 
and more of intellectual effort, the Ego proceeds, 
always tending by its spontaneous activity, which 
might properly be called an instinct, so primitive is 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 9 

it, to bring all that it perceives in consciousness, 
including itself, into unity. 

4. A detailed examination of the more advanced 
sophisticated mental processes of the Kgo will make 
still clearer the compulsion of the necessity of 
this primitive sense. The Bgo in all its processes 
of thinking assumes this as the fundamental notion. 
The great category of causality, that essential of 
every intellectual process known to us is no more 
than a corollary of this fundamental primitive 
instinct or impulse of the Ego to consider itself 
and all other as part of a whole. Causality predi- 
cates itself on this unity of the universe, for in this 
shape, among others, does this impulse emerge into 
thought as a cognition. It assumes for its own 
validity that all things stand bound together as 
parts of a great whole. Various, indeed, are the 
figures, the conceptions, under which the thinking 
of this has been attempted. Many of these have 
been utterly mistaken, such as that of the Greek 
philosophers, who conceived the unity of the Uni- 
verse regarding the stars as a series of crystal 
spheres, each revolving within the other, or the 
idea of the Chinese thinker, who considered the 
world as resting on a tortoise, and the tortoise on 



lO HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

an elephant. Yet this as truly indicated the 
working of the primitive instinct of the Ego to- 
ward the unity of the universe as the approved and 
accepted conception of the universe which swung 
the stars, racing with lightning speed through the 
darkness of space under the law of gravitation. 

The category of causality, to change our meta- 
phor, contains in it, as in a seed, the unity of the 
universe, that is, it demands for its validity that 
there should be something which binds all things 
visible and invisible together. It is a more elab- 
orate statement of the primitive formal principle 
of consciousness as we saw it emerging, vague and 
dim, and only felt as an impulse. If causality is 
inexorable in compelling our thinking, so also is 
its demand that there should be a bond, a some- 
thing, call it a law, a relation, a connection, a per- 
sonal authority, or an impersonal, incomprehensi- 
ble nexus or bond which holds all the chaos of the 
perceived phenomena together, gives them a com- 
mon foundation. The conipulsion of this neces- 
sity penetrates to the smallest details of our think- 
ing. It is found in that assumption that the simpler, 
the more universal, the form of any discoverable 
law, the more convincingly does it approve itself 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. II 

to our reasoning, and the more satisfactory is it. 
When a simple law is substituted for a more com- 
plex, when many apparently disconnected facts are 
grouped under the unity of a single law, and many 
laws under a single still higher law, there is experi- 
enced a feeling of satisfaction, and also an assurance 
of the correctness of the reasoning process by which 
this has been accomplished. Indeed, these two 
results seem identical, that is, the understanding 
being enabled the more readily to comprehend the 
manifold by reason of the simpler law, is also pene- 
trated with a sense of having come nearer to the 
truth of the universe in thus coming nearer to its 
unity. 

So strong is this impulse to unity or sense of 
unity in the universe, which is the primitive in- 
stinct of the Kgo, that it even compels it to contra- 
dictions of thought. In violation of all logic this 
impulse or sense urges us to assume as true in all 
cases what we find to be true in a great number, 
confers the attribute of universality on what is 
simply very general. Which simply means that 
the instinct of the Ego for the unity of the universe 
is so powerful that it feels that what has been found 
to be a law for many cases ought to be the uni- 



12 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

versal law, since it is compelled to think all things 
not as a chaos of many separate laws, but a hier- 
archy of graduated, carefully arranged uniform rules 
of conduct for all things, animate or inanimate. A 
conflict of laws in this sense is incomprehensible. 
There is a repugnance to thinking that one law may 
govern part of the same set of phenomena and an- 
other different law govern another part. Uniformit)' 
is demanded by its instinct or impulse of unit>\ 
We might trace this instinct or impulse into many 
other details of our thinking, but perhaps enough 
has been said to illustrate its all-per^^ading nature. 
We add, however, by way of conclusion of this 
part of our exposition, two other instances. 

We find it impossible, for example, to think any 
object independent of all other objects, and this 
impossibility declares itself in two ways : First^ 
to perceive one object we have always to do so by 
its differences from other objects. Bain's law of 
relativity tells us that all consciousness is conscious- 
ness of difference. We define it in size, for exam- 
ple, by its limitations, which are expressed in terms of 
other objects surrounding it ; we note its color by 
contrast, and so on. We could not cognize an 
object existing in a void destitute of other objects. 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 1 3 

Secondly^ to know an object we always require and 
mean a knowledge of its relations with other ob- 
jects. When an unknown object, an object never 
previously cognized, is presented to the Kgo, the 
first step to gaining a proper understanding of it 
(the attaining that mental satisfaction which is the 
reverse of ignorance) is to inquire its relations to 
other objects. If the object be a new chemical ele- 
ment, it is the knowing what its reactions are, what 
its atomic weight, that is, its weight as compared 
with other elements, and so on. 

We assume that each object, each separate ele- 
ment, even of the mass of sensations which pre- 
sent themselves to consciousness, has relations to 
every other. This we do in regard to utterly un- 
known and hitherto unperceived objects as well as 
in regard to those objects whose relations have be- 
come known to us through experience. All human 
knowledge may indeed be well characterized as a 
knowledge of relations. Of absolute knowledge we 
know nothing ; the very name is a mere negative, 
without meaning or substantial context, implying 
simply a contrast with relative knowledge. 

Too much attention and emphasis cannot well 
be bestowed on the manner of display of this activ- 



14 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

ity of the Ego, this sense of unity in the domain of 
thinking, on the side of cognition, that is to say. 
Every attempt of the Ego even to perceive the ex- 
ternal world intelligibly is pervaded by this con- 
straining, all-governing impulse. 

That we cannot account for it or explain it only 
proves how elemental and inwrought it is in the 
nature of the Ego itself impressed upon it, not like 
so many things, by the operations of experience, 
but something apart and above and independent of 
all experience. For how can we explain, by refer- 
ence to experience, that first step toward intelligent 
perception of external objects, that collecting by 
the spontaneous activity of the Ego all the separate 
sensations into groups ? Experience does not sug- 
gest this, for it presents them, by different organs 
of smell, touch, sight, and so on, as separate un- 
connected elements to consciousness. But the ne- 
cessity of the Ego's thinking requires that they 
should not be so regarded. It cannot understand 
them so, is the popular expression of its difficulty. 
It is a necessity, in other words, of the human 
understanding, in order to think the external world 
satisfactorily to itself, intelligibly, that it should 
thus collect the separate sensations and unite them. 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 1 5 

It is an Egoistic impulse solely, because it cannot 
be otherwise derived, for it opposes itself to the 
chaotic heterogeneity of sensations, is often dis- 
tressed by them, as when it receives inconsistent 
sensations, let us say a sensation of cold and of 
heat from what it thinks is the same object : it 
must reconcile the two sensations which are to its 
perception and understanding opposing, contra- 
dictory. It is satisfied when it discovers that the 
two sensations are really the same, and that the 
apparent inconsistency lies in the different degrees 
of heat of the percipient nerves of the epidermis ; 
to one set of nerves excited by a greater degree of 
heat the sensation produced by the object is that of 
cold to another set numbed by an absence of heat, 
it seems hot. Uniformity of law and of causal 
action, self-consistency are both but corollaries of 
this impulse to unity, as expressed in our thinking. * 

* How strong this Egoistic impulse toward the unity of the 
universe is may be inferred from the fact that some of the ablest 
thinkers have actually transferred several of its corollaries to 
the world of reality : have made of a purely Egoistic principle 
of thinking a criterion of reality. Thus Mr. Bradley, in his 
"Appearance and^Reality, " edition 1893, pages 136-140, /»(2jj/w, 
makes the principle of contradiction a test of reality. "Ulti- 
mate reality is such that it does not contradict itself : here is an 
absolute criterion. . . . The bewildering mass of phenomenal. 



1 6 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

5. There is still less reason for supposing an ex- 
periential source for the impulse to always seek ever 
higher and simpler laws for the operations of the ex- 
ternal world manifest to us in sensations. For if 
we can suppose that the mere succession in time 
or juxtaposition in space might compel, or at least 
suggest, a uniting in thought of separate and dis- 

diversity must hence somehow be at unity and self-consistent ; 
for it cannot be elsewhere than in reality, and reality excludes 
discord , , . We know that the real is one, but its oneness 
is so far ambiguous . . . And so we conclude that the real- 
ity must be a single whole . . . For we have seen that the 
absolute must be a harmonious system." 

All these deductions are but the consequences of the elemental 
impulse or instinct of the Ego toward unity of the universe. 
This compels it to exclude contradictions of one part by an- 
other, requires consistency of part with part, and harmony of 
each with each and all, with that unity itself which it is com- 
pelled to think as embracing all the parts, no matter how 
apparently diverse. When we thus make reality an object of 
thought, and declare it must be so and so, non-contradictory, har- 
monious, united in some whole, we so declare it simply by virtue 
of that impulse to unity which coerces us in thinking, we merely 
declare a necessity of thought, and cannot extend the necessity 
to the absolute, to the reality itself. A necessity of thought can 
never thus be made a necessity of reality of the absolute. This 
view does not neglect the idealistic position that thought is itself 
part of reality, constitutes it by some mysterious union with 
the non-Ego. Thought thus considered cannot be an object of 
thought, and nothing can be predicated about it : it is a con- 
stituent part of reality in this aspect, and cannot be thought 
any more than any other reality can be thought. 

To say that it must be self-consistent, harmonious, and so on, 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 1 7 

tinct sensations, certainly sucH a supposition is not 
possible for that tendency of the Ego to seek simpler 
explanations of given phenomena. There is not in 
either case any adequate answer to the query : Why 
is the Ego not satisfied to accept all sensations just 
as they present themselves, detached, separate, inde- 
pendent each of the other? And if it must think 
them, why cannot it think each the product of a 
separate cause, each supported by a separate some- 
thing, each entirely independent of every other? 
And why cannot the Ego presume for each and 
every operation which it beholds its own independent 
law or rule or principle created and acting pro hac 

is simply to say that so we must think it, for these are all terms 
of thinking, nothing more, and the attempt to give them a 
more extensive application is very like a man trying to lift him- 
self up by pulling on his boot-straps. 

Kant pronounced the final word when he declared : " Realities 
(as simple affirmation) never logically contradict each other is a 
proposition perfectly true respecting the relation of conceptions, 
but whether as regards nature and things in themselves (of 
which we have not the slightest conception) is without any the 
least meaning. For real opposition in which B — A is = O exists 
everywhere, an opposition, that is, in which one reality united 
with another in the same subject annihilates the effects of the 
other."* 

The proposition means no more, according to Kant, than that 
a conception containing only affirmatives contains no negatives. 

* " Amphiboly of Conceptions of Reflection, Critique of Pure Reason." 

3 



1 8 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

vice alone and never recurring ? Why can the Ego 
not suppose a new creation and a new law for every 
sensation, ever\' perceived action of the external 
world ? This, certainly, is what experience shows 
to it. There is but one answer, the Ego is so con- 
stituted by its nature. If it were to derive its im- 
pulse, its spontaneous activity, from its experience, 
it would most naturally accept all sensations and all 
phenomena as they present themselves and seek no 
connection or relation other than that of which it 
is aware in space and time, a simple physical or 
temporal adjoining. 

In the more advanced and higher activity of the 
thinking Ego in that unifying impulse that is mani- 
fested in a seeking after simpler, more comprehen- 
sive laws as the explanation of the phenomenal 
universe, it is even more evident that the impulse 
is purely Egoistic and not derived from experience 
either directly or indirectly. For how is the truth 
of any newly-discovered law assured to us ? What 
proof of it do we regard as conclusive ? You will 
answer, the proof of experience ; if the alleged law 
fits in with the facts of experience, we pronounce 
the law true. But in the last analysis, what is this 
fitting of the law with the facts of experience ? In 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 1 9 

what does this really consist ? Simply that the law 
fits more facts than any other, unifies more, satisfies 
that impulse toward unity, that sense of the one- 
ness of all better than any other. The proof is 
simply an appeal, not in reality to facts — such an 
appeal is impossible — but to the nature, the consti- 
tution of the Ego, which must think unity into the 
world and is assured by reason of this necessity of 
the truth of all laws that tend in that direction. 

The facts of experience, as facts, did not impeach 
directly any of the old and now abandoned laws of 
physics. Men built the pyramids, the hanging gar- 
dens, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Coliseum, not- 
withstanding an ignorance of that law of gravitation 
as discovered by Newton. And again, we may note, 
as a further evidence of this Egoistic impulse toward 
unity, that all the search for new, and what we call 
in obedience to this impulse, higher laws, takes the 
direction of simpler laws. A theory or hypothesis 
that would propose to resolve the law of gravitation 
into two or more other laws, that is to account for 
its facts by two laws instead of the single law, 
would be discredited by that circumstance alone, 
whereas a law which would take the place of 
the law of gravitation, by showing that it was 



20 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

simply a subordinate law of a still more com- 
prehensive simpler law, say a law of electricity, 
which would thus subsume the facts of the law of 
gravitation under the law of light, heat, and elec- 
tricity, would at once approve itself to the Ego by 
reason of the increased satisfaction afforded by it to 
that impulse toward unity. 

6. Thus we see that the most conclusive proof of 
the truth and reality of all our knowledge is simply 
in the last analysis an appeal to that impulse of unity 
which is the Ego's elemental, primitive instinct in 
its thinking. 

It is curious to note in this connection that the 
man of science, the dealer in material facts as con- 
trasted with the subtle metaphysical speculations 
which he characterizes as dreams, as fancies, is com- 
pelled to test his own theories, to measure the truth 
of his substantial facts with this immaterial yard- 
stick, this impulse to unity of the Ego as exhibited 
in thinking. The test of the truth of a law by ex- 
perience, by the evidence of facts, is apparent only, 
an illusion of the mind. For, take the history of the 
discovery of any given law. Undoubtedly it has its 
inception in experience, the sole source of our 
knowledge of the external world. Some particular 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 21 

action of one thing or another is observed, and a law 
is inferred as accounting for that action ; but upon 
further experience of other actions that law is found 
not to apply or to account for them ; it is then re- 
jected as not a true law ; that is, it does not set forth 
the reality. A new law is then sought which will 
cover the new action as well as the old. But on what 
rational ground is this rejection of the first law 
and the inventing of a new law demanded ? It is 
not contended that the first law did not fully account 
for the action from which it was originally inferred ; 
it still is as adequate as ever to explain that. Nor is 
it possible to actually bring the law into contact 
with the external reality and thus prove or disprove 
its validity, its correspondence with actual truth. 
No, it is rejected because it fails to explain the later 
learned facts ; and the new law is preferred as nearer 
the truth, as more correctly embodying the reality 
simply because it explains both sets of facts ; in 
other words, comes nearer to the satisfaction of the 
Ego's impulse to unity. The test of truth, there- 
fore, is not correspondence with the facts of expe- 
rience as such, for on this basis there might truly 
be a separate, reasonable, adequate law governing 
every transaction of the external world that be- 



22 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

comes known to us through sensation. There is 
nothing in the external world as manifested to us 
that forbids this. What in reality forbids it, com- 
pels our acceptance of one or two general laws as 
true rather than a number of separate individual 
laws, is simply this impulse of the Ego to unity 
which will not permit us to so think the universe. 

Indeed, the ver>' idea of law, of some general rule 
governing all or many of the actions of the external 
world, is based on this impulse to unity, this feeling 
of the oneness with itself of all the world, external 
and internal. 

7. It may be argued that this notion of law, this 
expectation of uniformity, is not the outcome of the 
Egoistic sense of the unity of the universe, but 
simply of an experience which finds that always 
the same thing follows regularly a certain other 
given thing, and thus there is inspired in the Ego 
an expectation of uniformity, of regularity. That 
is to say, the Ego simply accepts that uniformity of 
operation in all the transactions presented by ex- 
perience, as a fact of the external world. It is as 
receptive, as passive, in this as in any other act of 
perception of the non-Ego. But, then, how does it 
happen that when a different thing, something un- 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 23 

expected, not uniform with past experience, is pre- 
sented, it experiences a shock of incredulity, of 
disbelief, even in the truth of its experience thereof ? 
Why does it not accept this new experience as it is 
assumed to have done the previous experience of uni- 
formity, regularity ? Because, it may be said, that 
having received and accepted as a fact of experience 
the previous regularity and uniformity of past trans- 
actions, this unexpected, ununiform, irregular trans- 
action of the external world, by its failure to agree 
with this regularity and uniformity, contradicts the 
previous experience. But there is no non-Egoistic 
principle, no experiential source for such a rule as 
this. Why should all experience be non-contradict- 
ory, self-consistent, uniform with itself, so that a 
violation of uniformity should thus cause a ques- 
tion of the truth of the experience ? To be able 
to so pronounce on the deliverances of experience 
requiring of them self-consistency, uniformity, 
reofularitv as a bado^e of truth, and to doubt them 
when wanting this badge, evidently requires some- 
thing — call it a rule, an instinct, a belief — supe- 
rior and independent of experience. INIoreover, 
experience, strictly considered, does not present 
in its bare facts, as delivered to consciousness, 



24 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

any uniformity or regularity. It is only when, in 
obedience to its instinct for unity, the Ego searches 
out and collects the various and divergent facts, 
and groups them together by selecting their points 
of likeness — disregarding, of its own motion, their 
differences as trivial or non-essential — that anything 
like uniformity of operation is inferred from the 
facts of experience. The rising and setting of the 
sun is always referred to as the standard of Nature's 
uniformity of action as presented to the Ego in ex- 
perience. Yet, who of all the millions of men who, 
since the beginning of the world, have beheld the 
untold and unknown number of those risings and 
settings, ever saw one exactly like another? Are 
we not told, indeed, that there are no two things 
precisely the same ! The notion of uniformity, 
which, if it ever arose from experience, must cer- 
tainly have in part sprung from this great daily 
operation of the external world, sunrise and sunset, 
could only be reached by discarding as unessential 
some details of that experience, and emphasizing 
others as essential — a purely Egoistic exercise of 
activity — an early exhibition, in fact, of that sense 
of unity which of itself, without hint from experi- 
ence, seeks uniformity, regularity, unity, in all the 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 25 

universe. In short, we are fetched up again, and 
by a slightly different path, to that primitive ele- 
mental feeling of unity in all the universe. An 
ingenious attack * on all our reasoning is based 
iipon this very peculiarity of the Ego, that is, its 
elimination of differences in the objects of experi- 
ence and its emphasis of likenesses in this working 
out of its impulse toward unity, this effort to unite 
under a single rule or law all the various. The 
conclusions of logic, we are told, are made impos- 
sible of justification in reality, because logic pre- 
supposes as a basis for its judgments that which is 
impossible, to wit, that two objects can be exactly 
identical. F'or example, in the syllogism : All 
men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore 
Socrates is mortal ; it is assumed that the term 
"Socrates" is identical with the term "man." 
Such identity cannot really exist, and no conclu- 
sion based on that identity is, therefore, valid. This 
neglects the all-important fact that in thinking the 
Ego is dealing, not with realities, with the things- 
in-themselves, but with Eidola, thought-counters of 
its own manufacture, which are made by its spon- 
taneous activity under this impulse of unity which 

* See Rodder's "The Adversaries of the Skeptic," p. 115. 
4 



26 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

seeks out for itself likenesses, disregards differences, 
and thus seeks unity by classifying all the objects 
of experience according to their points of resem- 
blance, ignoring their differences. I^ogic frames its 
judgment, not on the real " Socrates," not on the 
real " man," but on these thought-counters of its 
own manufacture. It is utterly beside the mark to 
say that it is impossible for two real objects to be 
exactly identical ; for these counters are not real- 
ities ; they are the creations of the Ego, formed, it 
is true, out of the materials furnished by the non- 
Ego, but made for its own purpose, by the Ego, to 
be identical. It is on the identity of these counters 
alone that logical conclusions are based. The log- 
ical process goes no further, claims no greater valid- 
ity than this, that it shows the correct and legiti- 
mate method of dealing with these counters of 
thought. Its justification depends, not on the 
question whether the counters truly represent real- 
ity (a question impossible of solution), but simply 
on the far different question, namely, whether its 
process truly represents the relations between the 
counters ; that, for example, if two counters are 
exactly like a third counter, then the two counters 
are like each other, and so on. 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 27 

It is competent to ask if all logic deals with 
counters only of whose reality we can predicate 
nothing, exactly how such juggling with shadows 
and ghosts can add to our knowledge, to which the 
reply is plain, that logic makes no such pretense. 
It simply adjusts and classifies our knowledge, puts 
it into a useful shape, so that we may apply it. The 
statements that men are mortal, and that Socrates 
is a man, contain implicitly the knowledge that 
Socrates is mortal. By the logical process the Bgo 
is made aware of this explicitly. 

I have dwelt on this misconception at some length 
because it illustrates so pointedly the nature of the 
logical process, and exhibits it as a striking illus- 
tration of that impulse to unity in thought. For 
it is only by this impulse that logic is made possi- 
ble. This impulse to unity in thinking leads the 
Bgo to seek points of likeness in all the objects of 
experience, to disregard differences, if possible, and 
thus create for its thinking, for its logical processes, 
identical ideas or counters of thought in place of^ 
the partially similar objects of experience. 

8. A brief observation of the manner of action by 
the Ego in a recent concrete instance of this sort 
may assist us to a still clearer vision. The action of 



28 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

radium is a fact of experience which apparently 
contradicts the uniformity of past experience, form- 
ulated in that rule styled the conservation of energy 
and the indestructibility of matter. For radium, 
unlike any matter hitherto known, gives o£E energy 
apparently without any diminution in its bulk or 
power to so continue. In other words, it is a fact 
contradictory of that uniformity of operation which 
has been observed and learned from experience of 
other matter. Mark the manner in which the Kgo 
meets this new fact. It does not admit it as a new, 
hitherto unknown operation of matter, which is 
probably subject to a different rule from that known 
as the conservation of energy. This would be the 
simplest and most obvious treatment. Not at all : 
its sense of unity will not permit this, except as a 
last resource. On the contrary, it is forced by this 
sense of unity into one of two possible positions, 
either that the fact of radium is imperfectly per- 
ceived, and that a more careful observation will 
compel it to conform to the previous rule, or that 
the rule of the conservation of energy, confirmed 
by innumerable tests and never before impeached, 
except by this solitary exception, is untrue, and 
that a new rule must be framed to include and ac- 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 29 

count for the new fact, radium. That is to say, it 
prefers to doubt the truth of apparent experience 
in either case, either in innumerable instances form- 
ulated in the rule or in the case of the single in- 
stance presented by radium, rather than violate 
its sense of unity, or rather than violate its assump- 
tion that all the facts of the external world are gov- 
erned by the same law. Its sense of unity will not 
suffer it to admit two not mutually contradictory 
rules necessarily, for each might govern its own set 
of facts, but two rules where previously only one 
had obtained. Could there be stronger testimony to 
the compulsory power of that sense and desire of 
unity in cognition? 

Of it Kant has remarked that it is " a principle 
which extends further than any experience or obser- 
vation of ours and which, without giving us any 
positive knowledge of anything in the region of ex- 
perience, guides us to the goal of systematic unity." 
And again : " All that we can be certain of from 
the above considerations is that this systematic 
unity is a logical principle. . . . But the assertion 
that objects, and the understanding by which they 
are cognized, are so constituted as to be determined to 
systematic unity. . . . Such assertion . , . would 



30 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

render their systematic unity not subjectively and 
logically — in its character of method — but object- 
ively, necessary." * 

He also points out its use as a test of subjective 
truth : " The object of the hypothetical employment 
of reason is, therefore, the systematic unity of cog- 
nitions, and this unity is the criterion of the truth of 
a rule." f 

Bacon himself, in a less metaphysical, more practi- 
cal way, as became his subject, has similarly pointed 
out in the "Novum Organum," this Egoistic impulse 
toward unity. " The human understanding from its 
peculiar nature easily supposes a greater degree of 
order and equality in things than it really finds, 
and although many things in nature be sui ge^ieris 
and most irregular, will yet invent parallels and 
conjugates and relatives where no such thing is. 
Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move 
in perfect circles, thus rejecting entirely spiral and 
serpentine lines, excepting as explanatory terms." % 

9. So much, then, for the exposition of the cog- 

* Of the Regulative Employment of the Ideas of Pure 
Reason : " Critique of Pure Reason." 

I Transcendental Dialectic, Regulative Employment of the 
Ideas of Pure Reason : " Critique of Pure Reason." 

X *' Novum Organum," sec. 45. 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 3 1 

nitive or thinking side of the Bgo's primitive im- 
pulse to unity, as manifested in its effort to force 
the world into the mold of its thought into con- 
formity with its ideas of unity. 

On its ethical side this sense of unity, of being 
part of one great whole, develops into that sense of 
obligation, that feeling of the " eternal ought " 
which lies at the root of all conduct of the Ego. It 
emerges from consciousness a vague, empty form, a 
blind impulse, without object or purpose, until the 
coming into consciousness of sensations from the 
external world furnish it with content and material. 
Knowing thus itself as only a part, it naturally 
feels itself as subordinate to the whole, regards itself 
as owing, and the whole as demanding, something 
from it. Thus two ethical impulses or feelings 
manifest themselves, out of which all the rules of 
conduct spring. First, we have the equality of each 
part to every other, no one part has superior and dif- 
ferent rights or obligations from another. Secondly, 
we have the superiority of the whole to any part, 
whence arise not onlv the duties which the indi- 
vidual Ego owes to the whole, but the duties which 
it owes to other parts of that whole, those duties 
which, fully developed and defined, are styled the 



32 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

altruistic duties ; for it is plain that it is only through 
the existence of a whole, superior to any part, that 
any mutual obligations can be established by the 
parts toward each other. Considered as separate, in- 
dividual parts, without reference to any whole, by 
their very equality, each with the other, they owe no 
obligations, have no rights respecting each other. 
Their equality is simply negative, exacts only the 
negative requirement that each shall not infringe 
the entity of any other part. It cannot yield any 
obligation to help or perfect the entity of another 
part, except through the obligation to help or per- 
fect the whole, of which that other is a part. 

lo. Here lay a difficulty of that great expounder 
of altruistic conduct, Herbert Spencer. He at- 
tempted to base these altruistic acts on the self- 
pleasing act of each individual, each part of the 
whole, and endeavored thus to show that altruistic 
acts were simply a development of, a refinement 
upon, those primitive and necessary acts of self- 
preservation that are instinctive, and which, be- 
cause at once rewarded by pleasurable consequences, 
require no explanation. It was asserted that since 
altruistic acts helped the race or tribe that practiced 
them, the race or tribe which did so would survive, 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 33 

while the utterly selfish, self-centered individuals 
who refused to render these altruistic services to 
each other would perish. Thus, the habit of altru- 
ism would become established, since only those 
who practiced it would survive. 

The ancient philosopher exclaimed, that grant 
him but the spot to plant his lever, and he would 
move the world. So with this theory, grant to it 
but that first altruistic act, that first deed of self- 
sacrifice, and all the rest of the beautiful train of 
reasoning follows. It is the first step that costs, 
that first jump from self to other-pleasing acts. 
Sad to say, the theory itself forbids the saltatory 
feat that is so essential. How theoretically is the 
individual living creature whose every act is posited 
as prompted only by self-pleasing motives, to be 
brought to perform that first other-pleasing act ? 

Other-pleasing, altruistic acts can never be based, 
either mediately or immediately, upon self-pleasing 
impulses. Those self-pleasing impulses are, it is 
true, the first, the most primitive, the instinctive 
impulses of the Ego ; they are the natural appetites, 
desires, wants of the individual part, in which is 
manifested its existence as a separate entity distinct 
from the whole, and in a sense antagonistic, if not 
5 



34 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

to the whole, to every other individual part ; for 
those appetites demand all the requirements, assert 
the existence of the individual part to the exclu- 
sion of other parts, if that be necessary, and lead 
to that natural battle for life which we behold con- 
tinually waging between the individual parts of the 
whole. 

The sense of obligation does not attach to the 
self-pleasing and instinctive acts of self-preserva- 
tion ; they precede any such sophisticated reflective 
action of the Kgo, and stand in no need of it. It is 
only after the recognition of a whole, and of a duty 
to each other part as making up that whole, that 
the Kgo perceives that the same sanction, the same 
sense of obligation, although unnecessary as a 
motive, nevertheless theoretically applies to and 
justifies self-pleasing just as much as other-pleasing 
acts, that both are based on a duty to the whole. 

II. Here lies, too, the answer to a very common 
query about good and evil, considered only as affect- 
ing the individual part, separate and independent 
of the whole. Right conduct, considered simply 
as a means of producing pleasurable conditions for 
the individual part appears to import no obligation ; 
for why may not the individual refuse such and 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 35 

prefer evil? There appears no reason why man 
may not choose evil, if he prefers to be miserable. 
A man owes no obligation to himself which he can- 
not ignore. But when, on reflection, it is evident 
that the good and evil of the universe, the welfare 
of the unity is involved in the welfare of the indi- 
vidual part, then emerges the obligation to that 
unity which requires the individual part to conserve 
its own welfare as part of the welfare of the whole. 
A man is, therefore, not at liberty to do with 
himself as he will, destroy his life, maim his limbs, 
ruin his body, or weaken his mind. He is bound to 
seek pleasurable conditions in consciousness, rather 
than painful, not because he is not at liberty to dis- 
regard his own personal good, but because he must 
not disregard the good of the unity of the universe 
represented in his personal good. The good of the 
parts is necessarily, in most instances, the good of 
the whole. And when he is justified in disregard- 
ing his own good or evil, it must always be by reason 
of the obligation which he owes to the observation 
of the good and evil of the whole. In truth, nearly 
all moral problems are found to lie in this an- 
tagonism which apparently arises between the good 
of the part and the good of the whole. 



36 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

12. It has been remarked that this sense of obliga- 
tion to the whole, to the unity of the universe, 
emerges first from consciousness as a mere form of 
feeling, without any significance. The Bgo feels 
itself a part of a great whole, but knows not ex- 
actly the ethical significance thereof ; it recognizes 
no particular duty as springing thereout. It feels a 
necessity to serve that unity, but it knows not what 
that unity is, nor what particular concrete action 
will serve it. Its only means of learning this, of 
filling up the empty form of the " ought " with 
content is experience. It learns from experience, 
from sensations of the external world, its only source, 
of knowledge, what is good and what is evil for 
itself, for the whole, the unity, and for the other 
parts. In other words, it has to measure the good 
and evil of the universe by its own experience of 
good and evil. Of God's macrocosm it perforce 
makes man's microcosm. It fills in the content of 
this empty form of obligation which it feels to the 
whole by its own experience of good and evil. 
That which is good in experience for itself, it per- 
force considers good for every other part and for 
the whole. 

Thus understood, not as the source of the obliga- 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 2)1 

tion, of " the ought," but as its interpretation in the 
domain of experience, as its translation from the 
formal and abstract into the actual and concrete, 
Hedonism furnishes the only rational system of 
ethics. It furnishes the only adequate reply to the 
question of the ancient philosopher. What is the 
good? The Ego has the primitive compulsory in- 
stinct that it must serve the unity of the universe 
and all its parts, including itself. But how is this 
service to be rendered ? what is the meaning of it ? 
what acts or course of conduct will do this? In 
other words, what is good for the universe and its 
parts ? All the answers to this have been attempts 
more or less elaborate to define what is the good, 
and they have all come at the last to this simple 
definition : that is good which produces pleasurable 
conditions in consciousness. It would seem almost a 
logical necessity that some such definition should 
be made. It is the only one competent ; for, ob- 
serve, the nature of the case requires a test of good- 
ness that shall be immediately apprehended by the 
Ego, not doubtful, or requiring discussion or inves- 
tigation for knowing it. 

It is assumed, as a matter of course, that the Ego 
has within itself the power or faculty of judging 



2,8 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

what is good and what evil, something that knows 
the good in such a way that appeal ma}' be made 
to it with the utmost confidence in an ability to at 
once and directly recognize it. This is a very im- 
portant assumption, and, as already remarked, an 
absolutely essential one. For in all discussions, in 
all questions, if they are ever to reach a decision 
by the Ego, there must be some simple elemental 
admitted truth or principle which requires only to 
be named to be acknowledged as self-evident. Some 
things must be self-evident, or the task of proving 
the truth of any fact or theory would be hopeless. 
There must always be something by which doubt- 
ful questions may be tested and settled without 
appeal. In the domain of logic the principle of 
contradiction, of equality, that two things equal 
to the same thing are equal to each other, and the 
like are such. 

13. So in ethics there must be this simple, ele- 
mental, self-evident, self-sufficing test of the good 
to furnish the foundation of the ethical structure, 
something to which all teachers, all expounders of 
duty, of the " ought," may appeal with full confi- 
dence that the Ego's pronouncement will be final, 
ultimate, satisfactory, indubitable, so that if the Ego 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 39 

once recognizes that the teaching Agrees with, is af- 
firmed by that test, it will at once concede the truth of 
the teaching. Observe that the distinction between 
the sense of obligation, the " ought " and the con- 
tent thereof, the concrete expression of it in acts is 
to be carefully marked. This teaching concerns 
itself only with the latter, with ascertaining, in 
other words, what is the good of that universe and 
of these parts which the " ought " compels us to 
observe. 

14. All ethical systems concern themselves with 
this good as the essence of their teaching, as, in fact, 
the only province properly theirs, for with the 
" ought " they have no concern ; it stands as a neces- 
sity beyond their investigation, something given 
and to be accepted as elemental, something as- 
sumed as the basis of all their teaching. And in 
the last analysis their teaching all resolves itself 
into Hedonism, into the pleasurable conditions of 
consciousness as the final test of the good, a test 
which answers all the requirements, is simple, final, 
elemental, self-evident, as little capable of doubt as 
the existence of that consciousness itself of which 
it forms a part. 

Some systems, like the Utilitarian, admit this 



40 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

test by implication when they define the good as 
the useful. For if we declare that what is useful 
to man is good it is impossible to refuse to go one 
step further and answer the question that inevita- 
bly knocks at the door : useful for what ? 

Otherwise the inquirer is left with no answer at 
all. If it defines its useful intelligibly it must do 
so in terms of Hedonism. That is useful to 
man which produces him pleasurable conditions 
in consciousness ; this is the final end of usefulness, 
the ne plus ultra of reasons that which is, its own 
reason and requires no further justification. Even 
those systems which declare the good to be the 
creation of some authority, some to us apparently 
arbitrary power whose dictum it is, will be found 
finally to appeal to the Ego's apprehension of the 
good, the pleasurable in consciousness, for the 
reason why it is good, for the justification of its 
goodness. Christ Himself, the divine teacher, did 
not disdain to represent heaven as a place of de- 
light, of happiness, of the good, vaguely in detail — 
a definite picturing of it was doubtless impossible — 
yet most positively in manner of assertion. And 
so hell, the result of wrong conduct, was represented 
as painful and productive of torments. In other 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 4 1 

words, the good was interpreted by human experi- 
ence and through the pleasurable conditions of con- 
sciousness. In like manner the earlier Mosaic Deca- 
logue gave point and reason to many of its injunc- 
tions. Thus we are told that the swearer will not be 
held guiltless by the Almighty, that the dutiful 
child shall enjoy many days. The obvious inten- 
tion being to identify the doing of what is right 
with the good. Indeed, the contrary doctrine is 
revolting to the intellect and monstrous to that 
ethical sense or feeling which is common to all 
men. That doing right should not result in good, 
i. e.^ the pleasurable, or doing wrong, in evil, i. e.^ 
the painful, is incredible. 

15. In all possible ethical systems there is an 
undoubted identity of right with the good, the pleas- 
urable, and of wrong with the evil, the painful. 
But it by no means follows that a thing is right be- 
cause it produces good, or wrong because it produces 
evil, to the actor, to the agent. As we have seen, 
what makes right or wrong is this sense of obli- 
gation, this " ought " which the Ego feels with 
regard to the unity of the universe and all acts that 
concern it. What will produce good to that unity 
of the universe is right, and what will produce evil 



42 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

is wrong, because thus the Ego, as already pointed 
out, must think the unity of the universe, which its 
sense of obligation, its " ought " commands it to 
serve, is to be helped. That this course of action 
will also produce good or evil in like manner to 
itself as an inevitable consequence is a mere inci- 
dent : for its own good and evil are only significant 
when identical, as they not only usually are, but to 
our feeling must be with the good of the universe. 

It is conceivable, however, for an ethical system 
to sweep aside all questions of the good, to refuse to 
reason about it, to assert that to be right which is 
commanded by a superior power without justifica- 
tion, explanation, or other appeal to the reasoning 
faculties. Of such it is plain we cannot reason, 
since it expressly rejects all reason except to note 
that without reason it is impossible in our minds to 
attribute that moral quality which we do attribute 
to our conception of that sense of obligation, that 
" ought " that commands us to do right and refrain 
from wrong. Without reason, justification, expla- 
nation, we cannot voluntarily do an act because 
of this sense of obligation. If I do an act simply 
because I must, because a superior power compels 
me, my will, i. e.^ myself, takes no part ; it is not 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 43 

my act ; to make it such I must will to do it, must 
desire to do it because of an internal compulsion. 
If I recognize an act to be right, and in consequence 
of that recognition of its rightness voluntarily and 
freely will and desire to do it, then you have a 
moral act, you realize the kind of obligation which 
we attach to the doing a right, the refusing to do a 
wrong act. The other is simply the act of a slave 
obeying an arbitrary and possibly unjust master. 
To be voluntary, the act must be understood. We 
cannot conceive an obligation of which we do not 
understand the reason, exercising a moral compul- 
sion. To make it moral it must be voluntarily 
recognized. There must be a free, intelligent 
recognition of the obligation ; thus only can a moral 
quality be infused into our acts of obedience 
thereto. 

On this point Hegel remarks : " Impulses and 
inclinations . . . are sometimes contrasted with the 
rporality of duty for duty's sake. But impulse and 
passion are the very life-blood of all action ; they 
are needed if the agent is really to be in his aim and 
the execution thereof."* 

That is to say, my act of obedience to the obli- 
■^ " Philosophy of Mind " (Wallace's Translation), sec. 475. 



44 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

gation of the "ought" must be prompted by no 
mechanical compulsion from without, but by my 
own desire and feeling and wish to obey, so only is 
such obedience truly my act. 

1 6. When we come, as we now do, to the interpre- 
tation of this "ought " into conduct, the filling up 
of this sense of unity by a content furnished from 
experience, we find it assuming the most widely 
divergent concrete shapes. The Indian mother's 
sacrifice of her infant to the crocodile ; the refined 
and subtle sense of duty called Puritanical, which 
declares that all mortification of self, all denial of 
selfish pleasures is morally obligatory ; the ascetic 
of Catholic Christianity, as well as the self-torturing 
Mohammedan fakirs, all express in widely different 
fashion this same " ought." Hence has sprung 
that deeply ineradicably impressed notion of man- 
kind that to deny the individual to sacrifice the 
part to the whole is the cardinal principle of moral 
obligation. A curious twisting of thought thus 
takes place which, forgetting that all suffering or 
self-sacrifice is only justified by reason of the produc- 
tion of the good thereby, seems to elevate the sacri- 
fice of self, the suffering, the pain, which are only 
justifiable as a means to the good, that is the 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 45, 

pleasurable in consciousness, into an end in itself. 
It is for this reason that we always consider praise- 
worthy acts of self-sacrifice, of self-denial, no matter 
how mistaken we may think the actors ; for such acts 
evince unmistakably their source to be that sense 
of obligation to the unity of the universe, that com- 
pulsion of the " ought." They must be the expres- 
sion of the duty of the part to the whole, otherwise 
they are inexplicable. 

The great significance of the " ought," as already 
mentioned, is its universality. No race or tribe of 
men has been discovered without a trace of it in 
some shape ; but its expression in such widely 
varying forms as those just alluded to is only 
explicable, on the basis of the necessity for the 
transforming of it by that process of Egoistic 
interpretation into the concrete into conduct, not 
only, as already pointed out, by the experience of 
the good furnished by the external world, but also 
by the intellectual process required to ascertain 
what will be the appropriate means of producing 
the good of the universe ; how best the part which 
the Ego is shall act for the good of the whole. In 
the errors of thinking thus rendered possible, we 
find the reconciliation of the contradictory conduct 



46 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

of concededly good men, the burning of Serv^etus 
by Calvin, the constant meeting of Christian men 
in the deadly conflict of battle, some on one side, 
some on the other, and the like. For we must 
hold that so long as the part the individual Ego 
submits itself in good faith to the compulsion of its 
sense of obligation to the unity of the universe, its 
errors of thinking the good of that unity and the 
methods of serving it have no moral significance. 

17. It remains to point out that this "ought," 
this sense of obligation to the unity of the universe 
on its ethical side, cannot be derived from the 
external world of sensation. It is as independent 
of experience as the cognitive side of this unity, 
the unity of thought, was seen to be. It contra- 
dicts the sensations presented by the external 
world to the Ego just as the law of unity of thought 
contradicts the chaos of the manifold presented in 
intuition. The sensations of the external world 
command the Ego to shape its conduct so as to 
avoid the painful and accept only the pleasurable. 
In all animal life there would seem to be a law of 
conduct almost mechanical in its automatic action, 
impelling the living creature to avoid the one and 
seek the other. It might be styled a law of self- 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 47 

preservation essential to its material welfare. But 
the " ought " ignores this, lays down altruistic rules 
of conduct impossible of derivation from the self- 
pleasing law of the external world, and issues com- 
mands that often result in conduct exactly the 
reverse of that commanded by the sensations of 
experience. 

Another consideration leads us to the same con- 
clusion. For it is impossible that the moral quality 
which this sense of obligation possesses can be 
derived from experience. The mere fact that an 
act will procure for me pleasurable conditions in 
consciousness or avoid painful, imports no obligation 
that I am bound to recognize. I feel at liberty, 
without violation of any obligation to take or 
refuse either pleasure or pain. The sense of obliga- 
tion which I feel must be internal to have the 
proper moral quality, must be recognized as the 
result of my own spontaneous activity, my own 
recognition of its necessity and the reason thereof. 
It cannot have that quasi-automatic character which 
we have seen governs the action of mere pleasur- 
able or painful sensations on the animal nature of 
man. 

Nor can it be asserted that this ignoring and 



48 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

denial of the immediately pleasurable sensations 
at the command of the " ought " is a contradic- 
tion of the Hedonistic principle of ethical conduct. 
Such a denial is but the sacrifice of the imme- 
diately pleasurable to the ultimately pleasurable ; 
for when I at the command of the " ought " give up 
pleasure or accept pain, I do it governed by the 
desire for that pleasurable condition of conscious- 
ness which is the result of obedience to that 
" ought," governed by the fear of the painful con- 
dition which is the result of disobedience. 

1 8. The acutely critical reader may remark upon 
this exposition of the obligation of the " ought," 
and its interpretation by experience of the good 
that, after all, it merely identifies the law of con- 
duct with the law of thought, and exhibits each as 
but two sides, two phases of the elemental Egoistic 
sense of unity in the universe ; that beyond this we 
know nothing but that it is so. We have suc- 
ceeded only in simplifying, resolving the two into 
a single, all-pervading principle and instinct of the 
Bgo ; and have thus satisfied one of the Egoistic im- 
pulses already adverted to as illustrating the work- 
ing of the principle itself, in the domain of thought ; 
that is to say, we have reached a more universal, a 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 49 

more unifying principle, which, is always more 
satisfying to the Ego and carries with it an assur- 
ance of a nearer approach to the reality. Anything 
more than this is impossible to human intelligence. 
It is the only demonstration in our power. Let the 
critic ask himself what further proof of a different 
and higher kind he can conceive. Would he have 
a reason, an explanation, a cause for the elemental 
instinct of unity ; would he ask for an actual test 
of it by a comparison with reality ; if so, let him 
state how these are to be furnished. As well might 
he propose a reason and explanation, a cause, or a 
test by reality for the laws of thinking, for the 
smell of a rose. 

19. But there is still a further development of 
this elemental sense of unity of the Ego that we 
have now to discuss. It is involved in the exposi- 
tion of this last element of the ethical theory, the 
good. We have seen that, without experience and 
the content it furnishes to this sense of unity of the 
universe, this " ought," as a principle of conduct, 
is purely formal, a mere feeling or instinct of the 
Ego, that it is under a necessity to act as a part in a 
great whole, destitute, however, of all positive 
knowledge of what the whole is, or what relation 
7 



50 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

the part the Ego itself is bears to that whole, or 
what acts the necessity it feels demands of it. 

The good which the Bgo learns through its ex- 
perience furnishes this knowledge, this content, 
and we have seen that this good, pursued to its 
last hiding place, is the pleasurable condition of 
consciousness. This alone furnished the Bgo with 
such a self-evident, indisputable, indubitable test of 
the good as the circumstances required. For it 
was known directly, immediately, by the Ego, re- 
quired no discussion or argument, and could no 
more be doubted than the existence of conscious- 
ness itself, of which it was, in fact, a phase or 
mode of existence. To call the good pleasure sim- 
ply, rather than a pleasurable condition of conscious- 
ness, fails to mark precisely the true nature of the 
effect produced on the consciousness of the Ego by 
what we loosely call pleasure, as if it were a some- 
thing separate, independent of the subject Ego 
which experiences it. Moreover pleasure has ac- 
quired by usage an almost indissoluble connection 
with certain material causes of it, and its use might, 
therefore, seem to prejudge the question which now 
presents itself for consideration, to wit, the various 
causes of pleasure and pain, which, in experience, 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF KTHICS. 5 1 

furnish to the Ego that knowledge of the good 
which gives reality and concrete meaning to the 
"ought." 

At the first blush it may seem as if all the 
pleasure and pain of the Ego were simply the pro- 
duction of sensations, agreeable or disagreeable in 
and of themselves. But although undoubtedly 
this is the popular notion, accepted with little or no 
question, a very superficial consideration of the ordi- 
nary transactions of life will show its inadequacy. 
For the more obvious bodily pleasures it seems suf- 
ficient, the satisfaction of the appetites, the feast of 
the eye on color, the ear on sound, the nose on smell, 
require no explanation, save that there is a direct 
pleasure, immediate and elemental, connected with 
each. But even these simple, uncomplicated in- 
stances of pleasure, if we steadily regard them, re- 
veal depths of which at first we did not dream. 
Their very simplicity is their difficulty. Such an 
acute and clear thinker as Mr. Huxley has failed to 
catch the whole significance of them, when he re- 
marks that pain is not knowledge, but becomes part 
of knowledge when we think of it in relation to 
another pain. " There is only a verbal difference 
between having a sensation and knowing one has it ; 



52 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

they are simply two phrases for the same mental 
state." * 

There is all the difference in the world between 
having a pain which imports no knowledge and 
thinking a pain as related to something else which 
does import knowledge of relations, the only 
knowledge the human mind is capable of. Having 
the pain or the pleasure is not a possibility of 
thought : that is, the pain or the pleasure is a modi- 
fication of the Ego, of myself, it is something 
which, for the time, I am. It is a mode of my own 
existence. I cannot objectify or think it any more 
than I can really objectify or think myself. I can 
frame for myself an idea or symbol of it as I can of 
myself, and think that, and when I do this I may con- 
sider that I am thinking the pain itself, and that 
thus" thinking it, in connection with other objects 
of thought, with myself as an object, I may declare 
that I know I have a pain. To say that I know I 
have a pain requires that I should think the pain 
and myself in certain relations, neither of which is 
possible. I make ideas of each and can thus think 
them, but these ideas are not the realities any more 
than other ideas of external objects are the; reali- 
ties from which they are formed. 

* " Essay on Hume," page 86. 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 53 

20. There is a very curious consequence of this, 
hinted at by acute thinkers, but never fully devel- 
oped ; * it is the inability of the Ego to compare 
pleasures and pains, except by the degree of intensity 
and by duration, or quantitatively. The inability to 
think pain or pleasure forbids comparison, for, in 
order to recognize and know differences and thus 
compare we must not only do what has been shown 
to be impossible, make these states of the Ego ob- 
jects of thought, but in order to compare properly, 
we must be able to recall, at will, one and the other 
and place them side by side contemporaneously, 
which is even more impossible. 

21. Their causes we are able to compare and dis- 
tinguish, and often such operations are mistaken for 
a comparison of the states themselves. A ramble 
in the country, the eating a toothsome viand, the 
hearing agreeable music, are very different pleas- 
ures, we say, speaking popularly, but, critically ex- 
amined, the distinction is made, not in the pleasur- 

* Herbert Spencer has remarked: "Pleasures are more like 
one another than are the feelings (causes?) which yield them. 
. . . The wave of delight produced by the sight of a grand 
landscape is qualitatively much the same as that produced by 
an expressive musical cadence. There is close kinship between 
the agreeable feelings aroused, the one by a kind word, and the 
other by a highly poetical thought." — " Psychology," ^ 128. 



54 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

able condition these severally create, but in the in- 
tensity, the duration, the sequential condition of 
satiety, weariness, and so on. Perhaps it would be 
more accurate to assert, not that there are no differ- 
ences in these pleasurable conditions of conscious- 
ness, but rather that we possess no means of measur- 
ing them. 

Another curious consequence of the impossibility 
of thinking pleasure or pain is that we gain from 
them no knowledge. Knowledge is always with 
us a knowledge of relations ; we know only rela- 
tions, and to know them we must be able to think 
the objects known in relation, to objectify them 
with other objects in consciousness and observe 
these relations. This point, however, requires no 
elaboration, but deserves mention, because, possi- 
bly, an acute critic might remark that pleasure 
and pain seem not to differ from other realities 
in the requirement that, when we seek to think 
them, we must make ideas of them ; that we 
are in fact unable to think realities of any kind. 
This is, of course, true ; the difference, however, 
lies here, that other realities of the external world 
we only know indirectly by sensations, which 
have ever to be perceived, to be subjected, to that 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 55 

Spontaneous activity of the Ego, which, out of sensa- 
tions forms perceptions, while pleasure and pain, we 
do know directly as realities, they are one of the 
few realities known directly to us. When, how- 
ever, we think them, we substitute for these reali- 
ties the ideas of them, and thus confuse ideas of 
pleasure and pain with the realities which we ac- 
tually experience and thus know. Such confusion 
can never arise with regard to external realities 
which we know, not as realities, but only as per- 
ceptions, formulated for us by the spontaneous ac- 
tivity of the Ego. 

22. We have gone, perhaps it may seem, too 
minutely into this discussion of the deliverances 
of consciousness on the question of pleasure and 
pain ; but it is to be remembered that it is only as 
we keep close to consciousness as given that we can 
approach the truth as we are permitted to know it. 
Out of the cloth consciousness we are compelled to 
cut the coat philosophy, and out of it alone. It is 
impossible to turn the leaves of this our only book 
of knowledge too often or too carefully. Again 
and again must we peruse and re-peruse its every 
word and letter. In it and for us is locked up the 
wisdom of the ages. Its slightest operation holds 



56 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

more meaning for us than the flight of the stars, for 
it conditions all our knowledge. 

We may repeat then that these painful or pleas- 
urable conditions of consciousness which we call 
happiness or misery, and which we express by the 
simple declaration, " I am happy," " I am miser- 
able," are too elemental to permit further analysis. 
We cannot discriminate the " happy " or the 
^'miserable " into various kinds of happiness or of 
misery. These are modifications of the Bgo itself 
which defy comparisons. Fixing, as we naturally 
do, attention on the causes, the means of attaining 
happiness or avoiding misery, we feel a logical 
necessity for asserting that where the means are so 
various and differ so widely, the results must like- 
wise differ. A good dinner, a symphony of Beeth- 
oven, a novel of Thackeray, a self-sacrificing 
deed, are so different, that the pleasurable condi- 
tion produced in consciousness by them must 
differ. The doctrine that all pleasurable conditions 
of consciousness are essentially the same is so para- 
doxical as to be almost shocking. We are so 
accustomed to attributing moral superiority to one 
over another, arguing on this illogical basis that the 
pleasure must be superior morally, which is pro- 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF KTHICS. 57 

duced by a cause which we assume better than 
some other. There is, however, no warrant in 
reason for such assumption. All pleasurable con- 
ditions are of nature, of God's gift ; none is supe- 
rior or inferior. In and by themselves all are good 
and equal. On what rational basis is the pleasure 
of a good dinner to be declared morally inferior to 
the pleasure of a charitable deed or of a noble 
poem? 

But it may be asked : " Why, if all pleasures are 
alike morally, should there be any choice of pleas- 
ures such as we see exercised daily by men ? It is 
much like the case of a traveler to whom various 
roads present themselves all leading to the same 
place. Bach traveler will choose that road which 
suits him best and have a very decided preference 
for one over another, although all have the same 
terminus. So it is with pleasure each man takes 
that road to it that suits him best, and there may 
be a very great moral difference in these roads ; 
some may be of the very lowest and most debased 
character ; others of the purest and noblest ; some, 
while not of themselves wrong or immoral, are 
made so by the circumstances under which they 
are made use of. 
8 



58 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

23. It must also be noted that while unable to 
distinguish qualitative differences in pleasurable 
conditions, we do recognize a very important 
difference in intensity ; a difference which often 
governs the choice of the seeker after pleasure. A 
drink of w^hisky not only furnishes an easy and 
expeditious road to the pleasurable condition, but 
it makes the pleasurable condition far more intense 
in degree than the reading of a poem of Browning. 
It may not last so long or be unattended w^ith 
sequela of a disagreeable sort, and these differences 
also enter into the question of choice. 

24. These conditions of consciousness which we 
call happiness or misery are produced by the sum 
total of all the content of consciousness, sense- 
impressions, ideas, etc. I know immediately and 
directly when I am happy or miserable ; it is a mode 
of my existence, a state of my consciousness which 
allows of no doubt. I call it my feeling of happi- 
ness or of misery. With this feeling are alw^ays 
associated the content of consciousness cognitively 
considered, pictures or ideas of places, people, 
objects, and being thus associated a certain color or 
individuality is given to the feeling of happiness 
or misery which they accompany, so that a false 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 59 

appearance of a real difference in the feeling itself 
is often produced. It is thus that we are led to 
imagine that feeling of happiness resulting from 
the good dinner differs from the happiness result- 
ing from the poem of Browning. And so of all 
those feelings which we style so variously accord- 
ing to the particular cognitions which accompany 
them, feelings of anger, of gratitude, of jealousy, 
and so on through all the emotions of the Kgo. 
As a matter of fact, not only are all feelings of 
pleasure and of pain indistinguishable from others 
in its own class, but all those other apparently 
separate and different feelings are in reality simply 
either pleasure or pain masquerading under the 
motley dress of various ideas with which they are 
associated and which serve to disguise their true 
identity. In reality there are but two feelings — 
pleasure and pain. That is to say, there is no 
qualitative difference cognizable by us in any of 
our feelings except those qualities which we call 
pleasure and pain. 

Popularly and loosely we speak of feelings of 
sorrow, of anger, of shame, of triumph, of love, of 
all that catalogue of feelings which it is impossible 
to exhaustively enumerate. These seem to con- 



6o HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

stitute a vast gamut of what are not really difEerent 
feelings, but simply different accompaniments, differ- 
ent associations in the domain of cognition with 
those two feelings — pleasure and pain. All these 
feelings are distinguished one from the other by 
those items of the content of consciousness asso- 
ciated with them, but in themselves and by them- 
selves these feelings are always simple, elemental, 
either pleasure or pain, no more, no less, essen- 
tially. 

And it is as pleasure and pain that they exert their 
influence on the actions of the Ego ; for pleasure and 
pain, like the mighty giants, Gog and Magog, that 
stand guard with their great clubs over the door of 
London's Lord Llayor, stand over the Ego and 
coerce its every act. 

25. In short, there are but two feelings, or classes 
— if you prefer it — of feelings, and all feelings how- 
ever complicated or apparently different from each 
other will be found, on careful examination, to re- 
solve themselves into one or the other. 

My sorrow for the death of a friend and my disap- 
pointment over a pecuniar}- loss are qualitatively ex- 
actly the same. I distinguish them not from any 
difference in the intrinsic quality of the pain I feel 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 6 1 

in connection with each, but by the widely different 
content of consciousness that accompanies each. 
The causes of the two feelings are radically differ- 
ent. The absence of the familiar face, of the pleas- 
ant intercourse with my friend, are very different 
from the subtracting of a certain sum from my 
bank account, or the foregoing, perhaps, in con- 
sequence thereof, of a new suit of clothes, or a trip 
into the country. So the duration of the feeling 
and its intensity differ widely ; in the case of the 
friend I know that there is no earthly cure for his 
loss, my feeling is hopeless ; with regard to the 
money lost I feel, if a sanguine man, that to-morrow 
I may regain it, and possibly much more. 

Thus the two feelings, while essentially the same, 
are different in these conspicuous features — their 
causes, their duration, the actions required by them 
of the Ego, upon which the attention of the Ego 
is naturally fixed because it is upon these that its 
interest converges in its effort to avoid the painful 
and obtain the pleasurable. 

26. Other feelings differ more conspicuously in 
the resulting actions which they prompt and which 
in like manner serve to differentiate what are in 
their elemental reality precisely the same feelings.. 



62 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

Thus compassion and anger find expression in the 
very opposite actions of the Ego. 

I behold a man cruelly beating a horse and the 
sight causes a painful condition in my conscious- 
ness, it offends my ideas of humanity, or, to express 
it psychologically, these external sense-impressions 
are not homogeneous with the fixed ideas in my 
consciousness regarding the proper treatment of 
horses, and this painful feeling I seek to cure by in- 
terfering with the human in behalf of the equine 
brute, and thus restoring homogeneity to my con- 
sciousness. I am said to be moved by a feeling of 
compassion. 

Or, I receive a blow or a disagreeable speech from 
an acquaintance and I experience a painful condi- 
tion of consciousness caused by the insult to my 
self-love, my self-respect. I have a feeling of anger, 
we say, which makes me wish to strike back or to 
make a cutting retort, because in this way I shall 
be able to restore that homogeneity to my conscious- 
ness which has been rudely disturbed by the intru- 
sion of sense-impressions contradictory of those ideas 
of my own importance or worth which are in my 
consciousness. But both feelings, compassion and 
anger, are nothing but painful conditions of con- 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 63 

sciousness caused by different sense-impressions and 
leading to very different actions by the Ego, yet 
having precisely the same object or purpose, the 
removal of the painful conditions, the restoration 
of homogeneity to consciousness, and prompted by 
a feeling of simple pain, which is in both cases 
essentially the same. 

27. All these feelings which seem so diverse, so 
complicated, so full of infinite shades and delicate 
distinctions, possess these simply by virtue of their 
causes or their consequents. They may seem as 
various as the colors of an artist's palette, but 
in reality they are, like them, resolvable into 
very simple constituents. The prismatic element- 
ary colors of all feelings are simply two, pleasure 
and pain, and all that we fancy singularly indi- 
vidual and peculiar about any given feeling is 
attributable simply to its causes and consequents 
with which we color and confuse it. Fortunately 
for the final demonstration of this we are not re- 
stricted to our own necessarily imperfect analysis 
of the phenomena of consciousness, but may appeal 
to a far less biased and sophisticated authority, 
namely, to the automatic and spontaneous deliver- 
ances of consciousness itself in sleep. For in dreams 



64 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

and in nightmare it is a matter of common knowledge 
that no distinction is made between the various 
painful feelings or between the various pleasurable 
feelings experienced. Painful feelings that are, in 
fact, the result of physical causes, physical pains, 
are not distinguished from those which are the re- 
sult of mental causes. The mind acting thus with- 
out conscious direction of the will makes no distinc- 
tion between the painful condition produced by a 
stomach-ache and that produced by some mental 
anxiety. Mental pain and physical pain are treated 
as exactly the same feeling, so that with the utmost 
indifference a physical or a mental cause is assigned 
to either, which, of course, would be impossible 
were there a true qualitative difference between 
them, cognizable by consciouness. 

28. The painful feeling excited in consciousness 
by indigestion and by humiliation, or by mortifica- 
tion of self-respect, are indistinguishable. An emi- 
nent medical authority, Dr. Maudsley,* relates of 
his own experience that intestinal discomfort 
caused him to dream that he was conducting a post- 
mortem on a body in the dissecting room which un- 

*Mandsley's "Pathology of Mind" (Appleton's Edition, 
1880), page 33. 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 65 

expectedly came to life, that he struck it with a 
mallet, that he plucked out its heart, and that he 
felt an ^Hndescribable feeling of puz sled surprise mtd 
apprehension^ with a resolution to escape^ at any cost^ 
the consequences of cutting up a living body ; there 
was^ however^ a strong sense of personal repression 
or hu7niliatio7iy The italics are mine, but are an 
exact quotation of his words expressing the cause or 
reason assigned by his dreaming consciousness to the 
physical pain caused by some stomachic or other 
intestinal disorder of his system. The personal ex- 
perience of the reader will doubtless supply him 
with numerous other instances where he has, per- 
haps, — as it has happened to the writer, — dreamed 
that he suffered much mental distress and anxiety 
over catching a train that was just starting while 
he was making change for his ticket at the office 
window which he could not succeed in getting 
right. When he awoke he found himself suffer- 
ing in reality from a headache, for which conscious- 
ness had, in its effort to account for it, invented the 
train-catching incident with its mental anxiety. 

In like manner it is related of a woman who was 
suffering from incipient small-pox, that she dreamed 
that her husband was about to die on the scaffold, 
9 



66 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

thus attributing to the physical pain of the bodily 
disease a purely mental cause. Her mind, acting- 
without volition in sleep, was unable to distinguish 
any qualitative difference between the pain of the 
disease and the pain of the mental distress over 
her husband's condition. Sometimes one sort of 
physical cause is substituted for another. Dr. 
Maudsley* quotes the case of a man who, having 
had a blister applied to his scalp, dreamed that he 
was being scalped by red Indians. 

29. But it may be well to quote Maudsley's 
account of the causes of dreams, thus we shall 
appreciate better the bearing of the facts as illus- 
trating our theory. He says if " One is apt to 
think that the images and events of a distressing 
dream are the causes of the feeling of distress 
which is experienced, but they are not really so ; 
the feeling is more truly the cause of the images ; 
it is, so to speak, the mother mood of them." In 
other words, dreams are the attempts of the Ego to 
think feelings which, coming into consciousness, 
force themselves, as it were, upon an Ego, whose 
senses of sight, hearing, touch, all its other avenues 

■^Maudsley's " Pathology of Mind," page 28. 

t Maudsley's " Pathology of Mind," (Edition 1880), page 24. 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 67 

of information, are closed by sleep, so that it is left 
without their aid in construing the various disjecta 
membra into a perception intelligible to its reason. 
It cannot shut out the feeling, and, therefore, is 
forced to think it ; that is, to frame it into a per- 
ception in accordance with the law of its sponta- 
neous activity in this respect. A simple feeling is 
impossible of thought for two very distinct reasons : 
first, because, as we have already seen, all feeling as 
a modification of the subject, the Bgo itself, is, like 
the subject, incapable of being made the object of 
thought. All that the Ego can do is to form for 
itself what I have called a thought-counter, a 
thought representation of the feeling, and think 
the feeling just as it thinks external objects. It 
thinks not the feeling itself, but a representation of 
the feeling. But, secondly, it cannot think the feel- 
ing even in this way by itself as it is given to it, 
because it must think the feeling as it thinks all 
other objects, as part of that chain of causes and 
effects in which all things are and must be thought. 
It must think it under the categories of causality 
and the like. And, therefore, it invents for the 
feeling, the causes, the effects which are necessary 
for thinking it, supplying from its storehouse of 



68 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

memor\- the necessary material which the actual 
content of conscio'usness as presented it by the 
non-Ego fails to supply. In other words, the Ego 
dreams in order to think the feelingr intellioqblv 
which it is compelled to think. 

30. In this process we find an apt illustration of 
the difference between having^ a feeling^ and know- 
ing that one has it, a difference which Professor 
Huxley undertook to ignore. Having the feeling 
is the condition of the dreamer when he first feels 
or perceives the sound or the pain, knowing that he 
has it is his condition when he by dreaming attempts 
to think it ; that is, to recognize that he has the 
feeling with all that this implies of cause, effect, 
relationship to other objects of thought. Knowing 
implies thinking. The act of knowing implies a 
recognition of relationship of the thing known to 
other things. To know that I have a feeling 
requires that I should be conscious of a relation be- 
tween myself and the feeling, that I should have 
performed that primitive, but by no means simple, 
operation of making thought-counters of myself 
and of my feeling and have placed them in that 
relationship with each other which the laws of 
thought require. 



HINTS TOWARD A THKORY OF ETHICS. 69 

31. This effort of the Ego to think feeling or sen- 
sation is often instantaneous ; a lightning flash of the 
mind in its operation of knowing. Many stories 
might be related illustrating this. Thus, it is told 
of a man awakened by the slamming of a door, that 
in the interval between hearing the sound and awak- 
ening he had dreamed that he had entered the army, 
had deserted, and was about to be shot. The sound 
of the guns that were to put him to death was the 
sound of the door that awoke him. Even more strik- 
ing is a story related in the St. Louis Medical Re- 
view of a physician who while making a call was 
overcome with drowsiness. He was asked : " How 

long may you stay in B ? " His answer, which 

came promptly enough, was : " That depends on the 
Western Union." He explained that he referred 
to a telegram. In truth, however, his answer re- 
ferred to the fact of a dream which he had between 
the first part of the question, " How long," and the 

last, " may you stay in B ? " He dreamed that 

after a long and tedious experiment he had invented 
a wonderful apparatus for holding telegraph poles 
in a vertical position, had negotiated with the Postal 
Telegraph Company for its sale, but unsuccessfully, 
and had gone to the rival company. He was told 



70 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

they were considering a German invention for the 
same purpose. He crossed the ocean to examine the 
foreign device, returned, explained the differences to 
the intending purchaser, and was awaiting a reply 
when he awoke in time to hear the end of the 
question. Apparently the events of the dream occu- 
pied months, in reality they had consumed the time 
required for uttering four words. 

Here, in a nutshell, we have the whole process 
of thinking into a rational perception, a sensation 
which has been presented to consciousness naked 
and alone. At first a mere sound in consciousness 
without cause, without relation to any other object 
the Ego refuses to so think it. It has the sensa- 
sation, but to know that it has it, there is need for 
thinking it into some relation with itself, with other 
sensations ; for nothing can be thought entirely by 
itself. Until it does this it cannot be said to know 
the sensation. 

32. So much for the nature of the feeling of pleas- 
ure and pain, and of the feelings apparently differ- 
ent but in reality founded on them, to which we 
give such a variety of designations, according to the 
ideas, the pictures, the causes, and the effects, with 
which they are associated. 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 7 1 

That many of these pleasures and pains, or, as I 
prefer to call them, these pleasurable or painful con- 
ditions in consciousness, are caused directly and 
immediately by sensations from the external world 
we have seen. But there is a great number of pleas- 
urable as well as of painful conditions of conscious- 
ness which cannot be so caused, if we are to judge 
by the manner of their appearance in consciousness. 
Among such may be named pleasurable conditions 
or pleasures belonging to ambition, to friendship, 
to love of country and of persons in its highest 
sense, to work, to art in its many divisions of music, 
poetry, painting, the drama ; and so among painful 
conditions or pains may be named those of grief, 
envy, dishonor, hatred. It is impossible to name 
exhaustively, or even accurately, the intricate and 
complicated pleasurable or painful conditions thus 
constituted in the consciousness of the Ego. 

33. Perhaps the impossibility of deriving these 
directly or indirectly from pleasurable or painful 
sensations cannot be more clearly shown than by 
an examination of an attempt by one eminent phi- 
losopher to so derive them. The principle of asso- 
ciation, as it is called, is invoked and we are told 
that wealth, friends, power, and the like, produce 



72 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. - 

for US pleasurable conditions in consciousness and 
thus lead us to desire them and seek for them be- 
cause they have become associated with the pleas- 
ures of sensation which they procure for us. They 
thus, we are told by our author,* occupy and fix 
the attention of the mind even more than the 
pleasurable sensations themselves. I shall remark 
more at length on this principle of association and 
its true interpretation later on ; at present we have 
only to discuss its adequacy as an explanation. In 
regard to friends, we are told that we receive pleas- 
ure from them because of " states or circumstances in 
which a greater proportion than usual of our pleas- 
ures come to be associated with the idea of the 
individual . . . and in the expectation of future 
pleasures "t from them. We regard them as useful 
by their services in procuring material benefits, and 
so come to look upon them as agreeable in them- 
selves. According to this theorv' the pleasurable 
condition produced by friends in our conscious- 
ness would seem very much like that of any inani- 
mate souvenir associated in our mind with past or 
future pleasures which memorv' or imagination 

^Mills' " Analysis of the Human Mind," Vol. II., passim, 
t Mills' " Analyis of the Human Mind." Vol. II., p. 216. 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. ']2) 

may call up for us. A locket or picture performs 
very mucli the same service as the friend in this 
explanation. At best, the friend is pleasure-pro- 
ducing much as a useful tool by which we hope to 
get something desirable. Common sense revolts at 
this view as low morally, and untrue and unsatis- 
factory philosophically. We recall the famous 
friendships of all time, Damon and Pythias, David 
and Jonathan, Michael Angelo and Vittoria 
Colonna, in refutation of it. Our own introspec- 
tion informs us of the pleasurable condition we feel 
in the intercourse, the interchange of like thoughts 
and feelings with friends, and we fix there much of 
the cause of our pleasure in them. Moreover, if we 
carry the principle, as its author does, to other pleas- 
urable things and endeavor to explain the desire 
and love of wealth, of country, and so on, we are met 
with difficulties for which the principle is unable 
to account except lamely. We behold the miser, 
for the sake of wealth, giving up, not temporarily, 
but finally and forever, all the agreeable sensations 
which we are told cause him to desire it as the 
means of their procurement ; we see the patriot 
giving his life for his country, and thus losing by 
a single act all the agreeable sensations which alone, 

lO 



74 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

we are told, made him love it. Acts so conspicu- 
ously contradictory of the theory cast a suspicion 
upon its truth that it is impossible to disregard. 

For these reasons the explanation of the pleasur- 
able conditions of consciousness due to friends, 
wealth, ambition, and so on, as founded on directly 
pleasurable sensations, cannot be accepted. 

34. That in one sense all pleasurable conditions, 
as well as all other conditions of consciousness, 
have their basis in sensations is undeniable ; for 
without sensations we should have no content of 
consciousness. It is also true that the primitive 
consciousness of the young child, or even of the 
uncultivated savage, filled with the sensations pre- 
sented to it by the external world, constituting, in 
fact, conscious existence for the particular Ego is 
pleasurable in the absence of directly painful 
sensations. Mere existence without actual pain, in 
other words, is a positively pleasurable condition, 
and mere existence means the reception of sensa- 
tions from the external world, for so only is con- 
scious existence possible. 

This is readily perceived in those consciousnesses 
least sophisticated and nearest to their natural state. 
In children and savages there is a very consider- 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 75 

able pleasure produced by simply the procession of 
new sensations, one after the other, without regard 
to their particular significance mentally, or their re- 
sults in the way of directly pleasurable sensations. 
It is the mere filling of consciousness with content 
that causes the pleasure, and, while any one of the 
items may be indifferent in the sense that any other 
might be substituted for it without affecting the 
pleasurable condition, yet we cannot infer that any 
item is indifferent in the sense that it does not con- 
tribute its share to that condition. 

A child of very tender years is often seen to 
clap its hands with joy, to crow and exhibit other 
signs of delight, simply from the perception of a 
bright color, or rapidly moving object, a loud sound, 
none of which can have association for it nor any 
pleasurable or painful meaning other than that of 
filling its consciousness with content, variable and 
changing, giving body and matter to consciousness. 

35. We must, therefore, conceive of conscious- 
ness as a vast sea of contents, ideas, sensations, 
etc., which, if harmonious, constitute for the Ego a 
pleasurable condition. A very little reflection will 
assure us that, for the most part, it is this harmony, 
this homogeneity of consciousness that makes us 



76 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

happy, rather than any particular and especial 
pleasure-producing sensation, such as the taste of 
food, smell of flowers, and the like. For these, by 
their very nature, rapidly exhaust, apparently, the 
capacity of the Ego to appreciate or enjoy them. 
Satiety follows satisfaction. Ask the practical 
question of e very-day experience how many minutes 
of the twenty-four hours are filled by such pleas- 
ures ; their share of the Ego's attention is almost 
nothing to the pleasurable conditions constituted by 
the harmonious, homogeneous state of consciousness 
constituted by the items of its content all agreeing 
together. 

36. In addition to sensations or sense-impressions, 
we have, as a very important part of the content 
of consciousness, the ideas formed out of them as 
the raw material and shaped as variously as the 
Egoes, of whose spontaneous activity they are the 
product. 

How exactly these ideas, representative at first 
of the external world, gradually become modified 
and changed so as to picture for the Ego its desires, 
wishes, hopes, and the like, we need not inquire, but 
that such modifications do take place we know, so 
that the will of the Ego thus finds its expression. 



% 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. yj 

Pleasurable sensations undoubtedly play their 
part in impressing ideas upon the Bgo, making 
ideas of food, safety, warmth, and other primitive 
needs of the Bgo fixed ideas, pictured in conscious- 
ness, under images of objects which afford satisfac- 
tions of these needs. In this instance they become 
fixed by reason of association with pleasurable sen- 
sations, but not simply and only because of the 
pleasurable character of the sensations ; for asso- 
ciation with painful sensations has a like power 
of fixing ideas in consciousness, although perhaps 
not so frequently. The point to be remarked, how- 
ever, is the great psychological truth with which 
we have particular concern, that ideas once fixed 
in consciousness, no matter how, have first a strong 
and overpowering influence on its pleasurable and 
painful conditions, and secondly, and in consequence 
thereof, upon its actions. These fixed ideas, in their 
function of expressing the desires, hopes, fears, and 
so on, of the Ego, are, in fact, its will. 

^j. First, upon its pleasurable or painful condi- 
tions : the Ego is never happy unless its ideas and 
the sense-impressions of the external world as pre- 
sented in consciousness are homogeneous, agree 
with each other. 



78 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

One of its first spontaneous activities is to shape 
its ideas in conformity with the sense-impressions 
of the external world, so that they may correspond 
one with the other, a failure to correspond causes a 
painful condition in consciousness. The earliest 
manifestation of this is often called the influence of 
environment by which the living creature seeks to 
fit itself into its surroundings. This is evident, if 
we consider that the fitting of the living creature 
into its environment can only be brought about by 
the constant repetition of the same acts, done under 
the influence of fixed ideas, formed to accord with 
the sense-impressions received from the external 
world. These ideas, once thus fixed, have the ten- 
dency to get themselves executed in the external 
world, as all such ideas do, since they are no more, no 
less, than the concrete expression in this respect of 
the will of the living creature. No mere momentary 
impulse, caused by a painful or pleasurable sensa- 
tion, could have this effect of bringing about an 
adaptation by the creature to its environment. It 
is only when made a fixed idea — if you choose by 
previous pleasurable or painful sensations — and thus 
made a constant rule of action through the desire of 
homogeneity in consciousness, that the habitual 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 79 

usage can become the shaping factor in the animal's 
life, which is necessary to bring about a change in 
its character. 

There is a notable instance of this process re- 
lated in Genesis, where we are told of the peeling 
of poplar and hazel rods by the astute Jacob, and 
the setting of them up in the watering troughs as 
a means of inducing the breeding cattle to bring 
forth striped and mottled offspring. This shows that 
environment works not alone or altogether by 
pleasurable or painful sensations, although undoubt- 
edly these are the most powerful instruments for the 
fixing of ideas in consciousness, but that properly 
understood environment works its effects by means 
of ideas impressed on consciousness, no matter how, 
by actual pleasure or pain, or by the constant 
presentation of some spectacle, such as the striped 
rods of the cunning Jacob, but that, in either case, 
it is the desire of homogeneity in consciousness, of 
ideas and sense-impressions, that is the means of 
producing the results attributed to environment. 

38. Later on this desire for homogeneity in con- 
sciousness, between all the content, ideas, and sense- 
impressions, becomes a seeking for knowledge, a 
failure of the ideas to correspond with the sense- 



So HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF KTHICS. 

impressions is called error, or ignorance. Why the 
Kgo should find this correspondence of ideas with 
sense-impressions productive of agreeable conditions 
in consciousness, why it should prefer knowledge 
to ignorance is elemental. There is no reason ex- 
cept that it is so ; homogeneity of all the content 
of consciousness is pleasurable, and the want of it 
painful. 

39. If a more artificial explanation be attempted 
that knowledge is useful and enables the Ego to 
satisfy its wants better, and so on, it might be 
pointed out that long before any such sophisticated 
process of reasoning was possible to the Ego it 
sought instinctively for this homogeneity. More- 
over, as we shall see later on, the same desire for 
homogeneity leads the scientific discoverer and the 
student to seek knowledge, which, at any rate for 
immediate purposes, is purely abstract with no use- 
ful end in view, for the pure pleasure of the homo- 
geneity of consciousness, the correspondence or 
harmony of ideas with the sense-impressions pre- 
sented to it. 

40. Secondly, these ideas control the action of 
the Ego. Of this Herbert Spencer, with his won- 
derful faculty for impersonal self-analysis, affords a 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OK ETHICS. 8 1 

valuable, because entirely unconscious instance. 

He remarks of himself in his Autobiography (Vol. I., 

p. 445) : " There was here again illustrated a trait 

upon which I have before commented — the liability 

to be tyrannized over by a resolution once formed, 

consciousness becoming so possessed by the end in 

view (the fixed idea of our discussion) that all 

thought of anything adverse is excluded." He 

adds : " Had not my wishes so possessed me as to 

■exclude ideas of possible consequences ? " For what 

is the will of the Ego, of which so much is said, 

but those ideas expressing concretely its want in 

■each particular case ? 

Of abstract will we know nothing. And what is 

it that impels the Ego to its various acts but this 

tyranny of " resolution once formed," as Spencer 

•describes it — the desire, in short, to behold realized 

in the external world the ideas of consciousness ? 

This is that supreme pleasure called getting one's 

way, attaining one's purpose, having one's will, 

which in terms of consciousness is the making the 

sense-impressions of the external world — by which 

alone we know it — correspond with the ideas of the 

internal world of consciousness. In other words, 

it is no more than the homogeneity of consciousness. 
II 



J 



82 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

41. What this homogeneity of consciousness is 
will appear from the examples already given and 
those which are to follow. Let it be accepted now * 
as a brief label placed upon this state of conscious- 
ness subject to fuller definition by illustration and 
exemplification later. Consciousness thus consti- 
tuted of ideas and sensations, sense-impressions, 
may be likened to a great lake whose rule of well- 
being might be that splendid motto of William the 
Silent, Tranquillus in Saevis Undis. So long as 
no conflict arises between the various items of its 
content, each item helping to constitute a great 
harmonious whole contributes to the pleasurable 
condition of consciousness, and the greater the num- 
ber and the variety of the items, provided homo- 
geneity is maintained, the greater the pleasurable 
condition. 

42. The struggle of the Ego for homogeneity in 
consciousness manifests itself in one of two ways, 
either by making its ideas correspond with its sense- 
impressions, or by making its sense-impressions 
correspond with its ideas. The first method is that 
of the student, the naturalist, the discoverer, of all 
degrees, from the child up ; for it is evident that 
the first effort of the child in learning the various 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 83 

facts of nature by experiment is this process in its 
least sophisticated form. The second method is 
that of the workman, the artist, the statesman, the 
general, the leader of men, who seek to shape their 
work, their art, their country, and so on, in accord- 
ance with their ideas. Either way is a legitimate 
one for obtaining that pleasurable condition of con- 
sciousness which is produced by homogeneity of all 
its items with each other. 

The first method is largely a purely receptive 
process of the Ego by which it makes its conscious- 
ness a mirror, so to speak, of the external world. 
Of this little need be said. It is of the second that 
the discussion is important. The effort to shape 
the external world into the likeness of the ideas in 
consciousness is often explained as the executing 
one's wishes, having one's way, getting one's will. 
To do this gives pleasure, we are told, but this is 
no philosophical or satisfactory explanation. It is 
to explain the simple by the complex. Why should 
getting one's way give pleasure ? Often it pro- 
duces for the getter anything but pleasurable sen- 
sations. The ambition of an Alexander or a Napo- 
leon probably gave neither b}^ its success a single 
pleasurable sensation which they might not have 



84 HINTS TOWARD A THKORY OF KTHICS. 

gotten far more cheaply otherwise. So of states- 
men, so of the arduous labors of all those men who 
have accomplished great achievements. It is be- 
cause getting one's way, accomplishing what one 
plans, gives to consciousness that high degree of 
homogeneity which is produced by the reception of 
sense-impressions from the external world in per- 
fect accord and harmony with the previously formed 
ideas that it is pleasurable. The applause of such 
accomplishing is only another phase of the same 
process ; it means the agreement of other Egoes 
wdth the accomplishing Kgo signified by their 
praise, their tribute of respect or admiration. 

43. With the artist, be he painter, dramatist^ 
musician, sculptor, the explanation is even more 
clear. He works out his idea in whatever material 
he selects with no possible motive but this desire 
to produce homogeneity in the content of con- 
sciousness. For, popularly expressed, the artistic 
impulse is simply a cry for sympathy. It is found 
in its rudimentary form in the picture writing of 
the savages, the untutored scribblings of the street 
boy on fences : " I love Kate," " I can lick Bill,'*' 
''Jimmy is a dandy." 

Here are the beginnings of art. Even the mut- 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 85 

tered oath or half-stifled exclamation of the angry 
cabman or porter may claim the same origin. 
What the actual satisfaction is that we find in these 
expressions in times of excited feeling we all know 
by experience. We call it speaking one's mind, 
having it out. But the true philosophical explana- 
tion lies in this effort for homogeneity in conscious- 
ness which is helped by having the external world, 
even in this evanescent way, re-echo our ideas, our 
feelings, and so be homogeneous with our conscious- 
ness. 

In works of art the satisfaction seems to be two- 
fold ; for there is, first, that homogeneity which is 
gained for consciousness by the beholding in some 
external, tangible shape the symbol of the idea 
which was in consciousness ; and there is, secondly, 
the active sympathy of other Egoes which echo 
back to consciousness what it has expressed. It is 
that which is seen in its simplest form when we 
communicate our sorrow or joy or fainter emotions 
to a friend who receives and echoes them back, not 
exactly the same, but homogeneously to our con- 
sciousness. How much, for example, is the pleas- 
ure of a picture, a poem, a symphony, enhanced by 
the presence of a friend to whom we may exclaim : 



86 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

" How beautiful ! " How much is detracted from 
such pleasures if we receive an unsympathetic 
reply : " I do not like it," "I can see nothing 
in it." 

44. In a similar manner the pleasurable condi- 
tion involved in scientific or philosophic pursuits 
may be said to consist in the shaping the ideas of 
the consciousness into some outward form that 
sufficiently and adequately represents them. For- 
tunately we have a clear and satisfactory account of 
this given by a man who was himself a distinguished 
metaphysician, and who has analyzed the causes of 
the pleasure produced for him by his own philo- 
sophical work. Herbert Spencer, in his Auto- 
biography (Vol. II., page 524,) sets forth his own 
motives for writing. Among others, not omitting 
ambition and a desire for recognition, Jie mentions 
two : " The immediate gratification which results 
from seizing and working out ideas, as I once heard 
a scientific friend say that the greatest satisfaction 
he knew was that yielded by a successful day's 
hunting — figuratively thus expressing the discovery 
of facts and truths. And it has been to me a 
source of continued pleasure, distinct from other 
pleasures, to evolve new thoughts and to be in some 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 87 

sort a spectator of the way in which, under per- 
sistent contemplation, they gradually unfolded into 
completeness. There is a keen delight in intellec- 
tual conquest — in appropriating a portion of the 
unknown and bringing it wdthin the realm of the 
known." — Ibid.^ page 526. The second motive he 
calls the architectonic instinct. " During these 
thirty years it has been a source of frequent elation 
to see each division and each part of a division 
working out into congruity with the rest — to see 
each component fitting into its place and helping 
to make a harmonious whole." He asks of a par- 
ticular piece of work, begun late in his career, and 
still unfinished : " What spurs me to this undertak- 
ing?" and proceeds to answer the question in im- 
personal, characteristic fashion that the work, while 
not uninteresting in itself, has no great public im- 
portance, nor will it add greatly to his reputation 
long ago securely established. "Clearly, then," he 
continues, " my desire to do it is the desire to fill up 
a gap in my work. My feeling is analogous to that 
of the architect when contemplating the unfinished 
wing of a building he has designed, or one with the 
roof only half built. There appears to be in me 
a dash of the artist, which has all along made the 



88 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

achievement of beauty a stimulus," explaining by 
" beauty " the beauty proper to philosophic struc- 
ture, completeness of treatment, lucidity, finish, 
symmetry. All of which is a remarkable confirma- 
tion by one of the most keenly analytic of men that 
the true pleasurable condition of consciousness, pro- 
duced by philosophical or scientific pursuits, is a 
species of attaining of that unity of will which is 
constituted by the orderly arranging in outer ex- 
ternality of the inner ideas of the consciousness, 
so that a true correspondence, homogeneity of con- 
sciousness, may thus result. At least it may be con- 
fidently said that the " association " theory affords 
no adequate explanation of the pleasure thus pro- 
duced. 

45. And so of love, of friendship, of society, 
good fellowship with others ; the pleasurable con- 
dition results from that more or less close corre- 
spondence of thought, emotion, feeling, ideas, that 
these relations afford for consciousness. 

46. It may not be out of place, by way of addi- 
tional proof of the strength of this impulse toward 
homogeneity, simply and solely for its own sake, 
without regard to any other pleasurable or painful 
consequences, to adduce some very striking morbid 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 89 

examples of it. It is well known that in the phe- 
nomena known as hypnotism hypnotic subjects may 
be so impressed with ideas or commands to be ex- 
ecuted after awaking from their sleep, that, with- 
out knowing why or wherefore they will execute 
them. Innumerable instances might be cited of 
persons of weak or diseased minds, who have be- 
come so impressed with some often extravagant and 
absurd fixed idea, that with no apparent motive, 
at the peril of life and limb, they will put it into 
execution. 

Men have been thus known to leap from win- 
dows, apparently with no object, without purpose, 
simply because the idea of doing so had in some 
way become impressed upon consciousness. It is a 
matter also of common observation that when ac- 
counts of some particular crime or foolish act are 
found in the newspapers, a crop of similar acts is 
almost sure to follow the publication. One suicide 
prompts others, and so of lynchings, bridge jump- 
ings, train wreckings, abductions, and even mur- 
ders. 

In a famous German story there is a circumstan- 
tial account of how a malevolent old woman in- 
duced an imaginative and impressionable victim to 
12 



90 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

hang himself by the singular use of this psycholog- 
ical principle. She hung out opposite his window 
an effigy of himself suspended from a gallows. Day 
after day the horrible picture was dangled before 
his eyes, and at last he succumbed to its influence 
and actually did what this vivid representation now 
impressed as a " fixed idea " on his consciousness 
suggested. His act was prompted simply by a 
desire (grown overwhelming by long contemplation 
of the one fixed idea) for homogeneity of sensation 
of the external world with the fixed idea of the in- 
ternal world. 

The same may be remarked of famous books. It 
is said, to cite a celebrated instance, that after the 
publication of Goethe's " Sorrows of Werther," the 
suicides in Germany increased with startling 
rapidity. One of the strongest influences on human 
character is that of example ; the tendency to imi- 
tate the acts of others is inborn, ineradicable. No 
one likes to be singular, that is, to have a conscious- 
ness not homogeneous in content with that of his 
neighbors. And whether the craving for homo- 
geneity takes the violent form of becoming pos- 
sessed with the idea of a crime or of some daring feat, 
or whether it takes the milder . shape of simply 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 9 1 

adopting the opinions of those around us, the great 
principles are the same. First, that the Ego is 
eager to adopt as its own the ideas presented to it, 
and to thus attain homogeneity of its conscious- 
ness with the external world ; and, secondly, that 
having adopted the idea it has under the same im- 
pulse to attain homogeneity a strong tendency to 
put that idea into action, to cause the non-Ego, as 
perceived by it through sensations, to correspond 
with that idea. In other words, it causes a pleas- 
urable condition in consciousness to have the facts 
of the world of non-Ego correspond with the ideas of 
the consciousness of the Ego, and vice versa. But it 
need scarcely be pointed out that this, reduced to its 
simplest form, means that the homogeneity of the 
Ego is helped by the presentation to consciousness 
of sensations from the outside world of non-Ego 
that are homogeneous with the ideas in conscious- 
ness. This explains the otherwise inexplicable 
mental phenomena of the frequent doing of the acts 
just referred to without any apparent purpose, for 
no cause save that the idea has become fixed in the 
consciousness of the performer, and its realization 
in act will tend to an increase of that homogeneity 
which is so productive of pleasurable conditions in 



92 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

consciousness by causing sensation to correspond 
with the idea. 

47. This also affords us a ready understanding of 
the apparent truth in that principle of association 
by which some philosophers have attempted to ex- 
plain why money, friends, dignity, power, one's 
native land, become objects of desire in themselves, 
independent entirely of the agreeable or pleasur- 
able sensations by which, according to the theory, 
they were originally rendered so. These instru- 
ments, we are told, for procuring pleasurable sensa- 
tions occupy the attention of the mind even more 
than the pleasurable sensations themselves. They 
thus come to take the place of the pleasurable sen- 
sations themselves of which originally they were 
but the instruments of procuration. This state- 
ment reveals the true nature of the transaction. 

It proves that this is but another instance of the 
fixed ideas which we have been discussing. The 
ideas of these instruments of pleasurable conditions, 
wealth, friends, whatever you please, that have 
either by experience or in any other way become 
impressed on consciousness have thus attained the 
position of "fixed ideas" which the Kgo then has 
a great desire to realize in the world of non-Ego 



llJL 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF KTHICS. 93 

under the impulse of the law of homogeneity as 
previously shown. The use of the word "associa- 
tion," to describe the process by which these objects 
thus become objects of desire in themselves, may 
be allowed if we understand that it is thus they 
become fixed ideas. But if by association is meant 
some magic mental process by which a desire for 
one thing is transferred to another, or if it is meant 
that the instrument of procuring pleasurable things- 
becomes in itself pleasurable, very much like a. 
cherished souvenir of a loved relative because it re- 
calls the person by starting a train of memories by 
association, then we fall into confusion. It must 
be considered simply as the process by which a 
certain idea is impressed on the consciousness,, 
which thus becomes something to be executed by 
the Ego in the world of non-Ego in order to bring 
about homogeneity. 

If the contrary view were correct, and it was only 
the result of association, how would it come about 
that painful sensations have a like effect with agree- 
able sensations, although not so -commonly, in ren- 
dering certain acts or things desirable, such as 
suicide, jumping from heights, and the like ? Or 
how would it happen that in pursuit of things made^ 



94 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

thus desirable, such as wealth, power, fame, men 
scorn all the pleasurable sensations which these 
may procure not for a time, but utterly, totally, de- 
liberately, consciously placing the alleged instrument 
as the final object of desire without any reference to, 
or rather, to the exclusion of the pleasurable sensa- 
tions, future or present, by associations with which 
they are alleged by the theor}^ to have become de- 
sirable ? So a man for his friend, his family, or his 
country, will give up life and with it all the pleas- 
urable sensations which, by the theory of associa- 
tion, make these desirable. 

Moreover, there are many things highly desirable 
that is pleasurable-condition producing to one man 
which are the contrary to another simply because 
of the difference in the fixed ideas of each. These 
things, too, are often so intangible that it is im- 
possible to trace them, even by association, to any 
sensational source. The ideas of the discoverer, of 
the reformer, the philanthropist, the scholar, for 
which each struggles and often sacrifices health and 
life, can only, by ar very artificial and strained con- 
struction, be shown to have any foundation in sen- 
sation, pleasurable or painful. Such, for example, 
is that goal of the scientific discoverer, the unity 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 95 

of law in the universe ; this he seeks to establish, 
not because such goal has become by any pleas- 
urable sensations desirable, but simply because he 
wishes to make the external world of sensation 
correspond, agree, be harmonious with his idea 
of it. 

48. Why this homogeneity of consciousness 
should cause this pleasurable condition in con- 
sciousness — why having a fixed idea there should 
be this impulse to make a copy of it in sensations, 
to translate it into matter, if we choose to put it 
so — is elemental. All the reason we can declare is 
that to have the non-Ego, as known to us in sensa- 
tions, homogeneous in the consciousness with the 
ideas of the Bgo, is a pleasurable condition. It is, 
in all probability, another side of that great Ego- 
istic impulse toward the unity of the universe 
already expounded. To explain this homogeneity 
in the aspect now considered of executing ideas of 
the Ego in the matter of the non-Ego, as the get- 
ting one's way, doing one's will, takes us from the 
elemental and simple to the sophisticated and com- 
plex. Why should getting one's will, obtaining an 
object not in itself pleasurable, be desirable ? Be- 
cause, we may be told, it gives us pleasure. But 



96 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

liow and why ? By this homogeneity of conscious- 
ness, the correspondence brought about by our act 
between the non-Ego and the Ego as represented 
in consciousness by sensations, sense-impressions, 
and ideas. 

49. Unless, therefore, we restrict the meaning of 
our statement to the simple necessity of the pres- 
ence of sensations for the constituting of conscious- 
ness, it cannot be properly said that the pleasurable 
or painful conditions of consciousness depend to any 
very great extent on sensations. It is rather on the 
relation of these sensations to each other and to the 
ideas of consciousness that such conditions chiefly 
depend, as has already been pointed out. If we lay 
aside philosophical abstractions and those precon- 
ceptions of what ought to be, and attempt that diffi- 
cult task of merely seeing things as they are pre- 
sented, without prejudices, we shall behold a very 
different state of affairs. If we ask ourselves the 
question, How is the daily duration of waking con- 
sciousness made pleasurable or painful ? we surely 
cannot say by eating and drinking, by directly 
pleasurable sensations of any kind. Such sensa- 
tions, of necessity, fill a very brief space of the day ; 
work, amusements, what, for want of a better 



mA'i 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 97 

name, may be classed as daily routine, fill the time 
until we lapse into the unconsciousness of slumber. 
Or, if we ask the broader question, What do we 
seek in the plan of our life work, what does the 
youth hope for, the middle-aged strive after, and 
the old fold his hands over, in the quiet content of 
accomplishment or in the resignation of failure? 
surely no man will be so bold as to pronounce that 
it is the seeking for directly pleasurable or the 
avoidance of directly painful sensations. Even the 
most sordid, the meanest struggle of the poorest man 
for a bare subsistence, cannot be said to be simply 
this. Even such an one, so far from seeking merely 
pleasurable sensations as a means of producing a 
pleasurable condition in his consciousness, is driven 
to seek painful sensations of fatigue, of weariness, 
caused by his labor, in order to bring about that 
pleasurable condition of consciousness which we 
call an assurance that his bread and butter are 
secured. Now, observe, this pleasurable condition 
is produced not by the directly pleasurable sensa- 
tion of eating the bread and butter, the satisfaction 
is not a satisfaction of hunger, it is a satisfaction 
of an entirely different sort. It is a satisfaction of 
that craving for homogeneity by consciousness, that 
13 



98 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

the idea of the obtaining bread and butter should find 
a correspondence with itself in the sense-impressions 
of the external world. His consciousness is thus 
kept homogeneous with itself and he is happy, con- 
tented. It is true that this idea of obtaining bread 
and butter, of laboring to that end and being paid 
therefor, has been impressed as an idea upon his 
consciousness by the directly pleasurable sensations 
connected therewith, but if we are to be philosoph- 
ically accurate we must note that the direct motive, 
the immediate pleasurable condition for which he 
strives by his labor, is the making the external 
world of sense-impressions homogeneous with that 
idea of the getting of food. Hence the popular 
phrase expressive of the content of the laboring 
man : He has plenty of work ; not plenty of food, 
paupers have that in our almshouses. It is only 
another expression for the pleasurable condition 
of consciousness caused by homogeneity of con- 
tent. And so of the duration of the pleasurable 
condition, for the one brief hour of the pleasurable 
condition produced for the laborer by the directly 
pleasurable sensation of eating his bread and butter, 
we have the whole working day filled by the pleas- 
urable condition of his consciousness produced by 



iair 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 99 

this homogeneity of his idea and the sense-impres- 
sions affecting it. 

50. When, therefore, we have conceded the one 
point, that the idea of food and of labor for obtain- 
ing it is impressed upon the consciousness by the 
directly pleasurable sensations of food and drink, we 
have conceded the utmost that can be demanded 
for the effect of directly pleasurable sensations on 
the pleasurable conditions of consciousness in such 
a transaction. 

Even the most intensely pleasurable or painful 
sensations which take possession of consciousness 
as a rapture of pleasure or an agony of pain have 
their direct effect greatly modified and even neutral- 
ized by the other content of consciousness. Pain 
undergone for some deliberate purpose in harmony 
with some fixed idea of the consciousness, becomes 
less intense, or even a positively pleasurable condi- 
tion of consciousness, according as it is incurred at 
the hands of the surgeon to avoid loss of limb or life, 
or to testify faith in God. How many martyrs, by 
reason of this, have died in physical agony with smiles 
on their lips, hymns of praise on their tongues ! 

Any theory of pleasure and pain that leaves these 
facts unexplained is unsatisfactory^. 

LOFC 



lOO HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

51. A fair and more comprehensive statement 
would be, that while consciousness depends for its 
very existence on the presentation to it of sensations 
from the external world, and while some of these 
sensations have the power of and by themselves 
of producing pleasurable or painful conditions, 
nevertheless, the relation of these sensations to 
each other, and to the ideas in consciousness, is the 
important and deciding element in most cases. 
The pain- or pleasure-producing sensation coming 
into consciousness has its full effect as such, pro- 
vided there be nothing in the ideas or other content 
of consciousness to hinder or modify what may be 
called the natural effect of the particular sensation. 

Probably, as Herbert Spencer has beautifully 
pointed out, the very existence of the Bgo depends 
upon this arrangement, that certain sensations 
should be pleasurable, and thus immediately oper- 
ative on the will, so as to induce the performance 
of those life-preserving acts which are essential, 
and, in like manner, that other sensations, which 
are to act as a warning to the Ego of danger are 
immediately painful, and so operate prohibitively 
on the will at a time when this alone would pre- 
serve the existence of the Ego. 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. lOI 

In this way, doubtless, pleasurable and painful 
sensations are an important factor in impressing 
these ideas on consciousness, which thus becoming 
"fixed ideas," have a large share in constituting 
the content of consciousness, and thus affecting 
that homogeneity of consciousness which is the law 
of most of its pleasurable or painful conditions. 

52. We now return to the question of what this 
homogeneity of consciousness consists in ; and, 
first, we may, as an aid to our answer, rehearse 
some of our conclusions. Feeling, we see, as we 
understand it, as a modification of the Ego itself, 
and as the motive of all its acts, is nothing more 
than pleasure or pain. It is incapable of distinction 
qualitatively ; all pains and all pleasures are the 
same in this sense, and, as has been shown, are so 
treated, in fact, by the Ego when acting spontane- 
ously and automatically in dreams. 

Feeling in itself has no moral significance ; it 
serves, however, in the domain of experience as 
the translator into the concrete of the abstract 
principle of the " ought," which is again the ethical 
expression of that elemental primitive sense of the 
unity of the universe which the Ego recognizes in 
its thinking, and which, when it comes to act, 



I02 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

causes it to feel that its acts must never violate 
that unity, must observe it, be ruled and shaped 
so as to be in accord with it. This is the state- 
ment of the "ought," in its primitive, elemental, 
blind phase as a mere impulse of the Ego to act in 
unity with the universe. It shows itself in a 
thousand unintelligent, instinctive ways : in the 
tendency to be like its environment, that is, one of 
the earliest forms of the impulse to unity, in the 
feeling that the whole is more important than any 
part, in the impulse to seek purpose and end for 
every act, whether our own or that of another, and 
to regard an act or series of acts, say a life, devoid 
of purpose, as evil, useless, unjustifiable. This 
means always a purpose, an end, other than indi- 
vidual purpose or end, a purpose or end that has 
relation to others. For the seeking of purpose and 
the requiring of purpose other than individual for 
all acts is simply another recognition that all acts, 
as all things known to us, stand, not independently, 
but in relation to each other, that a unity binds all 
together, and for an act to be without purpose or 
end is for that act to deny that unity. What pre- 
cisely that unity is, how the purpose of an act is 
related to it, may be very indefinite, very vague ; 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. IO3 

the intellectual vision of it may be even mistaken, 
the moral obligation that it have a purpose other 
than an individual one, the " ought " is none the 
less imperative. 

53. And so all acts of self-sacrifice, all giving up 
of the individual part to the whole, have been re- 
garded from the earliest times by all men — no mat- 
ter what their education, their degree of civiliza- 
tion, or of barbarism — as praiseworthy, whether it 
were a sacrifice to a god on an altar, or in battle 
for a tribe, a race, a nation. It mattered not the 
particular object or end of the sacrifice, the princi- 
ple of the surrender of the part to the good of the 
whole rendered the act righteous, morally obliga- 
tory, admirable. 

It was from this law of unity, of sacrifice of the 
part to the whole, that there was derived the virtue 
and vitality of those awful and horrible rites of 
heathen primitive people, in which hecatombs of 
human captives were killed to appease a god Dagon 
or some other dread creation of their imagination, 
which thus gave concrete reality to that blind im- 
pulse of the Ego to serve the whole by the sacri- 
fice of the part, and which conceived the whole as 
symbolized in some cruel god whose wrath re- 



I04 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

quired the sacrifice of the subordinate parts in this 
bloodthirsty manner. 

These and many more are minor instinctive 
manifestations of this sense of obligation of the 
individual part to the universal whole. 

54. It is this essential universality of the " ought '' 
in the midst of unessential diversity of manifesta- 
tion that is the badge of its authority, its creden- 
tials, the certificate of its truth. These differences 
of manifestation seem to impeach its universality 
until we understand that they are caused by the 
necessity for translation of the abstract principle 
into the concrete act ; that the feeling or impulse 
toward the observance of the unity of the universe 
by subordination of every part thereto requires for 
its embodiment in acts both an intellectual under- 
standing of what that unity really consists in, and 
what ways and means are calculated to attain the 
end proposed, namely, the unity of the universe, 
and that, further, there is required an experiential 
knowledge of what is good and what evil. For we 
can only learn by personal experience what is good 
and what evil for that unity : we must base all our 
judgments on this personal experience, assuming 
for our purpose, and as the only possible assump- 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 105 

tion under the circumstances, that the good and 
€vil which we know in experience is the good and 
€vil of the unity we feel bound to serve. 

55. We have seen, further, that this good and evil 
are really the pleasurable and painful conditions of 
consciousness which are popularly called pleasure 
and pain, and that these pleasurable or painful con- 
ditions of consciousness are chiefly produced by this 
homogeneity of the content of consciousness, which 
has been described as the harmony or agreement of 
all the contents of consciousness, the ideas, cogni- 
tions, thoughts, sense-impressions, which constitute 
it with each other. In fine, this homogeneity is no 
more than another manifestation of this impulse 
toward unity. It is the desire of consciousness for 
unity with itself and with the external world, the 
sense-impressions from which make up so much of 
its content. What we have called the homogeneity 
of consciousness is in reality the unity, more or 
less complete, of the individual will with the uni- 
versal will. For these pictures, ideas, representa- 
tions, fashioned by the Ego for itself, are the con- 
crete embodiment or expression of its will ; thus 
only is will known to consciousness by a concrete 
representation of its desires, wishes, hopes. Of ab- 
14 



Io6 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

stract will, if there be such, a thing, consciousness 
has no knowledge. When, therefore, the sense- 
impressions from the external world, which are the 
expressions of the universal will as presented to 
consciousness, agree with these ideas, etc., the ex- 
pression of the individual will, there is a unity of 
the individual will with the universal. This is the 
highest unity known to consciousness, and is pro- 
ductive when even partially realized of the intensest 
pleasurable condition. We all have experienced 
examples of it, have felt the thrill with a wonder- 
ing sense of mystery, as if treading on the thresh- 
old of unknown regions of our deepest selves ; when 
we have been carried out of ourselves by some tre- 
mendous feeling of a crowd, or of a nation, felt 
together and in common each with every other. 
Then we felt imperfectly that unity of our will 
with the universal will, that loss of the individual 
in the whole, that is yet not a loss, but a finding, 
such a realization of the individual in the whole as 
was never possible for the individual part by and 
for itself. So the soldier feels as he rushes onward, 
an insignificant yet all-significant unit of a great 
army fighting with a common impulse for country, 
liberty, for any great unifying idea : so the martyr, 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. I07 

dying for his faith, either alone or with his fellows, 
but always under a vast common flood of devotion 
that is shared consciously by many others. 

In a fainter degree we also know the increased 
pleasurable condition of consciousness produced by 
the sympathetic presence of a friend whose ideas 
expressed to us in harmony with our own furnish an- 
other example of unity of will with will, of homoge- 
neity of consciousness, for his expressions conveyed 
to us through the senses become part of the content 
of our own consciousnes and add to its homogeneity. 

56. On the contrary side we discern that one of 
the most unhappy conditions known to conscious- 
ness consists in that want of unity of will with will 
which is familiarly known as hatred, with all its 
mean and subordinate modifications of envy, jeal- 
ousy, malice, ill-will. Probably the misery of the 
wicked, the damned of the Inferno, is nothing more 
than this disunity of will, this hatred of others 
which naturally results in the hatred of the whole, 
of the universe, of God ; for hatred of the parts 
would logically lead to hatred of the whole at last. 
If you love not men whom you see, how shall you 
love God whom you have not seen ? we are told in 
the Scriptures. 



Io8 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

Ivove is heaven, hate is hell, in this wide, uni- 
versal sense I have tried to outline. The supreme 
happiness of heaven we may picture as the perfect, 
all-comprehensive union of individual will with 
universal will, not by the merging, the disappearing 
of the less in the greater, but by the gaining of its 
true significance, the beauty of its individual mean- 
ing, from its union with the whole. So a single 
separately dissonant note gains its melody when it 
unites with others to make a great symphony of 
perfect harmony and beauty. 

57. Thus we get from examination of our own 
experience imperfect glimpses of what in our sub- 
ject is incapable of exact statement. All our ex- 
periential knowledge of the universal will must be 
but partial, imperfect. The universal will, as known 
to finite creatures, must always be finite, but a quasi 
universal, since a true, complete, universal passeth 
our capacity of knowledge. 

58. In this condition, therefore, in which the Ega 
and its other are at last one, there is no further 
difference, no contention, no struggle. But in our 
experience we have knowledge only of faint, more 
or less complete approaches to it that but serve as 
hints or shadows of the reality, of that perfect unity 



iiii 



mmmmmfammit. 



HINTS TOWARD A THKORY OF ETHICS. 109 

of individual will with universal will, which is 
impossible to our experience. 

59. All the struggle of the world of men for 
happiness is thus revealed as a struggle for unity 
of will in one or other imperfect shape, in some 
blind fashion that misses often the true path which 
lies not at all by that, so generally taken, of attempt- 
ing to force the universal will in its partial manifesta- 
tion to us by the immediate phenomena of experi- 
ence (those sense-impressions of the external world) 
into the narrow mold of the individual will. Such a 
task, clearly understood, reveals itself as impossible. 
These blind ways are commonly the pursuit of 
wealth, that term representing for the Ego all the 
command of the non-Ego supposedly necessary to 
obtain the unity of the will of the external world 
with that of the Ego ; the pursuit of power, another 
name for the same essential idea ; and so on 
through the various attempts of the Ego to coerce 
the -universal will into unity with its individual 
will. The success of these attempts, resulting in a 
partial accomplishment of their object, is not unat- 
tended with satisfaction such as might be expected ; 
but that it can never be lasting and fully com- 
pleted is evident. The will of the part cannot be- 



no HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

come the will of the whole, of the universe, without 
a violation of that great primary, elemental impulse 
to unity of the Bgo which in the domain of action 
manifests itself as the sense of the subordination of 
the part to the whole, not the whole to the part. 

60. In accordance with the law of the subordina- 
tion of the part to the whole, the only true way of 
hringing about unity of will between the Ego and 
its universe — no matter how imperfectly known in 
experience — is by compelling the individual will to 
conform to the universal will as it is imperfectly 
apprehended. 

It has already been shown that the pleasurable 
condition of consciousness which results from this 
unity of will when established in consciousness is 
love. It may seem a novel view of that much-dis- 
cussed feeling of the Ego to view it thus in its 
essential source. And it will not escape the accu- 
rate student that the name is properly applicable to 
every pleasurable condition of consciousness which 
is due to the harmony of the will of the Ego with 
that of its other, either Egoistic or non-Egoistic 
The pleasurable condition of consciousness result- 
ing from the successful accomplishment of some 
long-cherished plan which thus represents a unity 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. Ill 

of will of a restricted sort is in its origin the same 
as that of a long-established friendship. Both 
have their source in unity of will, the unity in the 
one case being that constituted by an agreement 
between the ideas (the plan) of the Kgo and the 
external world, made known by sense-impressions 
to it (the achievement) ; the other being a unity of 
the ideas of one Ego with the ideas of another. 
The source of the pleasurable condition lies in an 
identical cause, the unity of will, the homogeneity 
of consciousness. It is needless to repeat that the 
pleasurable conditions resulting from them must be 
qualitatively the same, so far as we can know ; for 
it has already been established that there is no cog- 
nizable difference between pleasures in this respect. 
6i. And so we may sum up our conclusions in 
this fashion : homogeneity of consciousness, unity of 
individual will with the universal will, is of all 
degrees from the mere reception and assimilation 
by the child of the sensations of the external world, 
with its simple joy therein, to that unity of will 
with will which is called love, not merely in the 
restricted personal sense, but in that universal sense 
which Christ taught, love of the world and all 
therein, and of that unity of the universe which 



112 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

we symbolize to ourselves as a personal God with, 
human qualities. 

As between two loving individuals we recognize 
this unity of will more clearly than as between the 
single individual and the whole, but the existence 
of that unity of the individual will with the uni- 
versal will is a reality more vague, more shadowy, 
more spiritual, yet none the less real. The history 
of the disagreement and of the subsequent agree- 
ment of the two is set forth in the story of the 
" Fall of Man," as it is called, when all nature lost 
its unity with man, the beasts of the earth, before 
kind and docile, became his enemies and he himself 
fell to fighting and quarreling with himself and them. 
Bven plants no longer yielded their fruit without a 
struggle, disunion of will pervaded all nature as 
men knew it. Then came the At-onement, the 
process divinely pictured of the restoration of the 
unity of the individual will with the universal. 

An impersonal, universal will, a blind universe 
without human qualities, was a conception extreme- 
ly distasteful to the Bgo ; if it thought the universal 
will it longed to think it under a human or personal 
guise. A universe or an universal will that ran on 
without anthropomorphic ^government, unseeing. 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. II 3 

unsympathizing, without human qualities, seemed 
harsh, cruel, utterly unhomogeneous with the con- 
sciousness of the Ego.* So from the earliest times 
the Ego made all the forces of nature, every ex- 
pression of the universal will, in the fashion of 
man, idealized, etherealized, but yet substantially 
human. So it gave the winds a God, the light- 
ning and thunder, the sea, the earth, to almost every 
aspect and feature of nature some human divinity 
— if it were no more than a dryad or a nymph — 
was given. The conceptions changed, but the 
human quality of that universal will of the uni- 
verse never was lost ; it seemed with every change 
to become more human, more near to the individual 
will in its character. The stern, awe-inspiring 
Jehovah of the Jews that gathered up into itself 
and stood for the will of the universe instead of the 
gods of Olympus, gave way to the mild, tender 
Christ, who seemed to lose all the sternness of the 
power and majesty of a God in the human quali- 

* It may be objected that such a human conception of the 
Almighty was an absurd limiting of Him to the mere measure 
of a man ; but properly conceived this should not be so ; it is 
not declaring that God is man to endow Him with those human 
qualities which the Ego craves. He is man so far, and much 
more than man ; it is simply asserting that the greater, the in- 
comprehensible God, includes the lesser, comprehensible man. 

15 



114 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

ties of mercy, sympathy, love, who was pictured in 
the wonderful words of Scripture as '* not one 
which cannot be touched with the feeling of our 
infirmities, but was in all points like as we are, 
yet without sin " (Hebrews iv. 15). 

62. We now come to see what that good of 
which so much has been said really is. The su?n- 
nni77i bomim^ the good of all goods, the very essence 
of the good for the individual part, is unity of will 
with the universal will, which is when interpreted 
in terms of consciousness, love, not of course, in 
any physical, but rather in that Platonic sense to 
which Aristophanes, in Plato's dialogue, ''The S>Tn- 
posium," alludes: ''Human nature was originally 
one, and we were a whole, and the desire and pur- 
suit of the whole is called love/' "^ 

Or, as ^li. Haldane has expressed it : '' Love is 
the perception, the feeling, the knowledge of the 
unit}- between self and its other," or again, more 
imaginatively, '' Love is the highest relation of 
spirit to spirit." "^ Or, as we have stated it : Love 
is the unity of will with will. 

* Joweti's Translation of Plato, edition 1S71, Vol. I., page 

509. 

t " Pathway to Reality," Haldane. London : John Murray, 
1904. Review of same in Edinburgh Review, July, 1904. 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. II 5 

It is a state of consciousness that may be truly 
called religious, for it recognizes dynamically as its 
own will the universal will, recognizes the relation 
of the tie that binds it to the unity of the universe. 

It finds its highest pleasurable condition in the 
observance of that unity which, on its cognitive 
side, is expressed by the impulse to unite all 
knowledge under a single all-embracing law, ex- 
pressing for thought the unity of the universe, and 
that recognizes for a knowledge of truth all knowl- 
edge that approximates the fulfilhnent of this law 
of unity : which on its ethical side compels the 
Ego, under the obligation of the " ought," to act 
only for the good of that unity, and which receives 
its reward for such action, as well as its impulse 
thereto, from that pleasurable condition of con- 
sciousness which is constituted by unity of will 
with the universal will. Thus is seen that virtue 
and the reward of virtue are one and the same. 
For that unity of will which is the summum bonum 
of all pleasurable conditions, is itself and in itself 
a beatitude, is also in itself right, and the source 
and motive of all right doing. Having the pleas- 
urable condition of unity of will with the universal 
will, it is impossible that the Ego should, by actions 



Il6 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

contrary to that unity of will, offend that unity of 
the universe thus felt in consciousness. 

Homogeneity of consciousness compels homo- 
geneity of conduct ; any break in the unity of wills 
must first manifest itself here before it emerges 
into action. Thus is understood the import of that 
great saying : Love is the fulfilling of the law ; for 
love is unity of individual will with universal will. 

The substantial identity of these three aspects of 
the impulse to unity is now manifest. Unity of 
feeling, homogeneity of consciousness constituting 
a pleasurable condition of consciousness, unity of 
thinking constituting intelligible understanding of 
the external world, unity of action constituting the 
observance of the good of the unity of the uni- 
verse, are all rooted in that primitive abstract im- 
pulse of the Ego toward unity which in them finds 
its concrete expression. 

63. A ready answer is found here for some of the 
foolish questions that men have curiously inquired 
into, more, one would think, with the idle curiosity 
of a child than with a truly sober desire for knowl- 
edge. The vulgar gibe against Christianity, for 
example, is brought forward that all religion, so 
far as it is hedonistic in the offer of rewards and 



HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. II 7 

punishments, is the perfection of selfishness. Or, 
in a little different way but to the same effect, it is 
asked if the doing right for a reward or avoiding 
evil through fear of punishment is not a low type 
of virtue ? 

Doing right is now seen to be its own reward in 
this way, that it is created by and re-creates that 
unity of will of the individual with the universe 
which is the highest pleasurable condition of con- 
sciousness. It is not selfish, although it produces 
for the Bgo its highest good, because it at the same 
time produces good for that unity of the universe : 
nor is it unselfish, although it does acts tending to 
conserve the unity of the universe, for at the same 
time it produces pleasurable conditions for itself. 
Selfishness and unselfishness have here no signifi- 
cance ; they lose it in their true relation, and are 
each the other. They cease to be opposed, but 
each passes over and is sublimated into its oppo- 
site. 

And so the birth and existence of evil in the 
face of an all-powerful universal will is seen to be 
not only possible, but necessary. For if evil is the 
opposition of the individual will to the universal, 
we may see that for the universal to destroy the 



Il8 HINTS TOWARD A THEORY OF ETHICS. 

Opposing will of the individnal, to forbid it all 
choice, and so prevent its willing and doing evil, 
that is, acts contrary to the universal will, would 
be to destroy the will itself, and so destroy all possi- 
bility of that good which must consist in that unity 
of the individual will with the universal will which 
shall preserve the individual will at the same time 
that it unites it with the universal will, making of 
both a harmonious whole. 



END. 



FEB 21 1907 



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